


The Autumn Moon is Bright

by barrowjane



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrowjane/pseuds/barrowjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has two secrets he keeps from Sherlock - he manages this, he thinks, only because Sherlock would find the idea that John is attracted to him just as unlikely as the idea of John being a werewolf. He's not sure what it says about his life, that love and lycanthropy are considered equally impossible events. <br/>[Bigbang2011 fic, moving over from livejournal.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 Sherlock Bigbang, and shifting house from livejournal. Please check the [story's livejournal masterpost](http://barrowjane.livejournal.com/22347.html) for links to artwork and podfic of the story, all of which are wonderful, and because it was tirelessly and fantastically betaed.

-

The Autumn Moon is Bright

-

_Even a man who is pure in heart  
and says his prayers by night,   
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms   
and the autumn moon is bright._

-

He's seven, and Harry nearly ten, when their father pulls both of them aside, sits them down at the kitchen table, and explains, patiently and firmly and over and over and over again, how important it is to be careful. That being careful is the only way to be safe, that you never know how people will react to something so far outside their experience.

He remembers the conversation, despite how young he was.

“Your mum's something of an extraordinary sort, after all. To put up with this on top of my usual nonsense.”

His mother walks in on that. “I am beyond extraordinary, dear, to put up with your incessant shedding, if nothing else.”

His father smiles. “You've both got it from me, through and through, and you must be careful. Someday, if you're well and truly _sure_ of a person, you could tell them. But not until you're properly grown up, you pair of pups, understand?”

The both of them nod, although John doesn't understand, not really. Not the words, though the tone, the warning, is clear, and perhaps more than enough.

“Good,” his mother says, and hugs the both of them, ruffles John's hair. 

John follows Harry out of the kitchen, which is something of a mistake. Harry shifts then and tackles him in a mass of fur. She's barely beginning to grow up and out of her puppy-short legs, and into her proper height. She has her full set of proper teeth, though. 

He's only just started to loose his milk teeth, and yelps as her weight hits him, bowls him over to the ground. Shifting that quickly is tricky, always, but he manages it, giving nearly as good as he's getting. 

Harry's bigger than John, who's small for his age anyway, but he manages to wriggle beneath her while they're wrestling, to shove hard against the softness of her stomach. 

She doesn't like that, not at all. 

She growls and shifts, twisting away from him to whip about and bury her teeth in his left foreleg, just below the shoulder, biting down hard. Too hard – she's still not used to her new teeth, and it suddenly isn't fun anymore, not at all, his leg flaring up in agony as her teeth tear through fur and muscle.

Twisting, John yelps like he's dying, like she's killing him, and the next sound is his father's angry growl – he's shifted, forcing Harry loose and, snarling, driving her off of him. Curled in on herself, ears flattened back to the curve of her skull, she's terrified and horrified in equal measures. Even when she shifts back she stays curled up, drawn in on herself.

His arm's blazing with pain and his blood is streaking the edges of his sister's mouth. He wants to vomit, and the feeling doesn't go away even when he shifts and his mother rushes over with the first-aid kit, fussing over his wounds.

“I don't care what instincts you have, Harriet, you _never_ attack your brother, not like that.” Their mother's words are sharper by far than their father's teeth. John lets his crying trail off, settling into a quieter pain. In trade, Harry's begun to cry, curled onto herself and shoved into the corner of the room. She's all legs and arms, but she's never looked so small.

His father has shifted back, but he's still anger and sharp teeth. Harry's terrified of him, and maybe of herself. If John weren't so preoccupied with how his shoulder hurts, he might be a bit scared of their father too.

“It's alright, dear,” his mother says to him, sing-song soft as she eases his shirt away from the wound and begins to dress it.

Harry is punished for most of the summer, even though John's mostly forgiven her within two weeks. The scar never quite fades away.

-

Afghanistan is dust and dirt, red rock and a sky so blue and open that John looks up and sometimes feels like drowning. Like you could fall off the edge of the world, here, if you weren't careful.

They're shot at everyday, or near enough, and he spends his days taking orders and giving them; saving men when he can and watching them die when he can't. It's miserable and wonderful in equal measure, and a part of him loves it.

He doesn't love it now, though. That much is certain.

The IED hit their half of the convoy and did more than its fair share of damage, ripping through the two jeeps right before John. His own vehicle was spared most of the brunt of the explosion, though in the haze of shouts and screams, the smells of sand and blood and panic, it doesn't feel that way. The explosion took out some of the bonnet, probably some of the engine with it, and the jeep's as good as scrap, surely, but they're all fine, cuts and bruises aside. John's out of the vehicle as soon as he can, running to the two jeeps that were caught in the worst of it.

He's a doctor, though, not a miracle-worker, or a magician. He hears the gunshots start up as he's busy trying to keep some nineteen-year-old's intestines from falling out. (Philip Dayton, his mind fills in for him. Nineteen, American, had introduced himself with a smile and a comment that despite the last name, he was from Jersey, and John hadn't been entirely sure what he'd meant, but hadn't asked.) Everyone else in his jeep is already dead; the explosion took out the entire driver's side, and shrapnel had ripped through the man in the front passenger side, cutting through his carotid with an unintentional precision that bordered on surgical.

The boy is unconscious, which John's willing to count as a blessing since god knows he doesn't have any painkillers strong enough to help with something along the lines of a gaping stomach wound. 

He smells them before he sees them, grease and gun-metal, different from the soldiers he's used to, the wind blowing the scents to him from the east, fitting them in under the bite of the burning vehicle, petrol fire. 

This is a problem – he could reach for his gun, should probably reach for his gun, but the body beneath his hands still has a pulse, and the minute he lets go that'll certainly change. Half his damned guts all over his hands, but there's still a pulse, and the boy's still breathing, although even his sharp hearing can barely pick up the wheezing breaths over the sounds of gunfire.

He's still got a pulse, but by the time they work their way through the convoy's hastily erected defense and get to him, there's nothing but a body under his bloodied hands.

-

Probably, they grabbed Richards because he had the highest rank of everyone in the convoy. Well, there was Ivrek, but as Ivrek had been driving the jeep hit by the IED, his corpse wasn't much use to anyone. 

John's not sure how he's of much use to anyone, but they'd taken him too, dumped him and Richards into this makeshift cell, a room with small, narrow windows, heavy door with a posted, armed guard. 

The first time, five men come to the cell, almost more than the hallway can hold. John notes that the ragtag assembly probably isn't even really associated with the Taliban. Their weapons look like cheap knockoffs. He almost expects to see 'replica' stamped on them, although they'd probably be better quality if they were. They reek of fear, sour and sharp against the dry smells of the desert. 

Local gangs, living off the war. 

They take Richards with them. Three hours later, they bring back a mess.

-

When the men come the second time, after he's had Richards bleed out all over his hands (and his arms and his shirt – he feels covered in the man's blood, and it'll never come off, not all of it) he doesn't let himself think of anything other than that, if he'd done this the first time, Richards might be something other than just a body.

He shifts and lunges all at once, going for the guard's throat and feeling the sickening satisfaction as muscle and cartilage hold for barely a moment before yielding to the inexorable tearing pressure of his teeth. The man doesn't even get a chance to scream, and soon enough John is covered again in someone else's blood. 

He should try keeping track.

Two men behind him, and this gets a bit trickier as they recover enough from the shock of his transformation to raise their weapons.

They try to, at least – John is fast, so very fast in this form and furious, twisted by rage and the heavy taste of blood in the back of his throat. He doesn't recognize himself, as he slams into the next man, going not for the throat but for his hand, his teeth seizing at his wrist and tearing, feeling the wet snap of bones breaking. 

He must look like a demon, something that the desert birthed, painted in similar shades of brown and gold, shadows of black. Maybe there are even stories about a monster like him, something that stalks the edges of the sand and sky. The folklore his does know is no stranger to wolves, after all. 

John doesn't know many Afghani stories – he doesn't know that much Pashto at all, actually, but he doesn't need to. The fear in the remaining man's eyes is clearer than any language. 

There's blood slicking in his fur, clumping the hairs into red-tinted edges. He is a monster to this man.

The soldier's young, John realizes. Terrified, barely twenty by the looks of him, but John was covered in the blood of a dead nineteen year old when they came for what was left of the convoy. 

The growl builds in his throat as he crouches over the body. He'll make it quick – take out his throat. The boy won't have time to feel much, beyond the shock from the bite and the blood loss. 

His hands tremble on the grip of his assault rifle. He doesn't manage to get a shot off before John's on him but the soldier by the eastern makeshift wall of the compound does, and the bullet rips messily into his shoulder. For one confused moment he's seven again, and Harry is tearing through his upper arm with her too-sharp teeth. This is worse, though, this is so much worse, as if the bullet stole all the breath from his lungs. Like in Uni, being tackled around the ribcage in the middle of a rugby match, being suddenly breathless, lying in the middle of the pitch staring, disconnected, at the sky.

If he were in human form, this would have ended him – the wound and the shock of it would have knocked him down, and the next bullet would have gone through his head. His wolf form can take much more damage, though, and he still has three good legs. The soldier fires again, but John's pushed his pain down by the time those shots miss him, and his three good legs have carried him close enough by then.

The man screams, but only once. It's quiet after that, the sand and the sky and the smell of the dead. He can't escape the harsh sound of his own panting, the pain screaming through his shoulder every time he moves. He manages to limp back to the room they'd been holding him in, nosing at the pack of medical supplies he had.

They can't have been that difficult to track – or, at least, he hopes not. Right now, though, all that means to him is that the soldiers who get here will greet him with shouts and a bullet to the head. Likely more than one. He's a wolf covered in blood, after all, and this room is full of corpses. Richards is still in the corner, his blood everywhere. He had to edge past the bodies of two of the men he killed to even get here, and he picks up the medical pack, strap held securely between his teeth, and pads carefully out of the room.

This might, after all, kill him. He'd rather not die with company, even though the courtyard outside smells of death too; new death, from the soldier he killed there, joined by the new blood, copper-bright scent, dripping from his shoulder.

Can't heal around a bullet, and the bullet may not kill him as it is but the rescue will. So, John shifts and it hurts worse than anything, the bullet tearing as his shoulder changes around it. God, god, it burns, until it doesn't, until it's on fucking fire and his shoulder is ablaze and the sky above isn't blue but burned white.

When John manages to push the pain down enough (along with the bile, and he doesn't quite manage that, retching twice) to come back to himself, he finds himself on the ground. He's curled up on his side, and his shoulder is bleeding like he's just been shot again, blood all over his uniform. He tenses his arm and immediately wishes he hadn't. 

At least he's got nothing left in his stomach to vomit up. The bullet's still in his shoulder, and his medical pack is by his good hand – his only hand, right now. He reaches for the gauze, and for his knife.

-

When he's discharged, he meets up with Harry. It's something like his version of building a bridge between them, or trying to, but because this is him and Harry, the bridge is already on fire before he's started.

“Queen and country and getting yourself shot. Did they include all of that in the brochure, John?”

It's familiar, at the least, the quick snap of words this time, instead of teeth. Shame they're in the middle of a cafe, John thinks, since they might actually progress somewhere if they just shifted and had it out, like when they were kids. 

Healthy modes of expression, the therapist they'd assigned to him has said. He needed to find healthy modes of expression. 

Shifting to wolf-form and having it out with his sister probably wouldn't count.

“Oh yes.” He sips at his coffee, then dumps more sugar into it. “There were glossy photographs and everything. I thought I forwarded you a copy.”

He can nearly see the effort Harry puts into holding back the snarl building in her throat. She shouldn't bother. She smells of worry and anger instead of alcohol, and her blond hair, a lighter color than John's own, is a mussed halo about her face. The result is much the same as what he's used to from all their conversations – a tense talk that degenerates into almost-shouting before Harry's thrown down her phone ( _take it, so maybe you can trying calling me without you needing to get shot first_ ) and twenty pounds when the bill was barely ten and is storming off. 

He leaves it on the table and finishes his coffee, ignoring the weight of the rest of the cafe very carefully not looking at him. The words he didn't get a chance to say, the ones he might have wanted to, stick in his throat, and he has to swallow past them to drink anything. 

Harry doesn't understand, but that's not her fault. John knows exactly where the blame lies here, and all of it – the regrets and the limp and the cane – hangs on him, weighing him down when all he wants to do is wander about London properly, lose himself in the man-made maze of the city. 

If he shifted, he could manage, he thinks. Of course, if he shifted in the middle of London in the middle of the day, he'd have a whole new set of problems to worry about.

It's all too close, here. The buildings, the grey sky. He's gotten used to the desert, maybe, or just the expanse of blue. Hemmed in. London feels like a trap, or maybe a cage. 

Before the war, he would never have thought that of the city.

He doesn't, at the first, mean to go to Clara's. John picks a direction and keeps walking, his stupid leg aching even through it shouldn't have. London passes by in a blur of streets, cars, and bustling people until he's at a familiar blue door. 

Losing time, he thinks, because when he checks his watch he realizes he's been walking for going on two hours. As if making up for forgotten time, his leg begins to throb, dull but insistent.

When he rings the bell, the buzz is louder than he'd have thought, nearly startling him, for all that he'd obviously expected it. 

“Well done, John. Jumping at doorbells,” he mutters. “And, apparently, talking to yourself. Perhaps that therapist will have more than her work cut out for herself.” 

The door opens on his last muttered syllable, and Clara spares him the moment of an appraising glance before catching him up in a hug. For all that she's slight, she's enthusiastic, and his good leg braces under the strain as wisps from her otherwise neat plait brush the side of his neck and face.

“Glad to see you too, Clara,” he says when she detaches herself. Clara, her eyes narrowed behind her reading glasses, whacks him delicately on his uninjured shoulder. 

“Come inside. It's just rained -” she starts.

“It's London.”

“Well, it's London being stereotypically damp, then, and that can't be good for your shoulder. In.” 

He's ushered into a house that still smells like Harry. She hasn't been here in over three weeks, though, and the scent's died down, lingering like dust in the air and collecting like cobwebs in the corners. 

“Do you want anything to drink?” Clara asks. “I've got tea and coffee. And more tea, I think. We are something like a bastion – we are a fucking _fortress_ of tea. Perhaps. I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure we could conquer small countries with this much tea.” John trails after her as she paces through the kitchen, rifling through cabinets. She's right; there is a lot of tea, and a decided lack of anything else.

“Trashed it all, then?”

Clara pulls an odd face, something halfway between crying and laughing, as if she could go either way. Laughing wins, which is a relief. “Poured it all away the second Harry left.”

Fidgeting, she tugs at the long sleeves of her cardigan. It's a gauzy, lacy sort of knitted thing, looks about as insubstantial as she does, and almost hides the ring she's still wearing. “Alright, fine. Harry walked of the door and I wept like infant for about two hours. Then I poured all the bloody booze away. It was very nearly cathartic.”

“I'm sorry.” He is. Clara was good for Harry. It's not her fault Harry wasn't that good for her. That much may run in the family.

“It was a mess on all sides. It's alright. The place has never been so clean, if nothing else.”

Clara cleans obsessively when she's upset. Even now, she's straightening the rows of cups by the sink. 

“We should sign you up. You're a sight better at it than most of the recruits I knew.”

“Don't you even start,” she warns.

“I'm serious, Clara. It's spotless in here. If you didn't have a designer table, I'd be perfectly fine with eating off the floor.”

That earns him an exasperated smile. “Mutt. You'll run into the problem of there not being much in the way of food. I'm in the middle of a major case, and I'm afraid cooking and other basic, human needs have fled in terror.”

“And thus, takeaway?” 

“There's a bunch of menus in the drawer under the sink, unless I've thrown them away in a fit of cleaning pique.”

“Is that likely?” he asks as he walks over. “After all, wouldn't you have just organized them properly – in a folder, with -” 

When he pulls the drawer out, precisely folded towels and a folder labeled 'menus' in Clara's exacting hand greet him. 

“Well. Clara, there are people you could see about this, you know.”

“Therapy waits for Chinese food,” she says. “Go."

They end up skipping the therapy. Instead, Clara bullies him into accepting her offer of the guest bedroom and they settle in for a movie. John doesn't bother trying to follow the plot – things explode with fair regularity and Clara spends most of it asking if his PTSD can handle the strain, the poor dear. He returns the quips, until halfway through the movie, when he shifts instead.

“Fur all over the sofa,” Clara moans. “Nothing for it, I suppose. Come on, up you get.” She pats the cushion next to her, and John wastes no time in hopping up and settling there, despite the fact he takes up most of the sofa in this form. He tucks his legs neatly beneath him and lets his tail beat idly against the cushions. After a minute or so, Clara begins to wind her fingers through the fur between his ears, and for once he doesn't have to pretend to be anyone other than himself.

He can't stay here forever. He can't even stay here for the night, he knows. But right now, for a few hours, pressed against Clara's side, that's alright.

And tomorrow, though he doesn't know it yet, he'll meet Sherlock Holmes.

-

Sherlock Holmes is wonderful and extraordinary and absolutely out of his mind. It very quickly becomes the theme for John's life. 

When Stamford introduces them, John isn't sure what to expect from the tall, pale man, and wishes for a moment he could shift – then, at least, he'd have the advantage of keener senses to try to puzzle out Sherlock. As it is, he has to fight past the room's sting of chemicals (and god, but that takes him back, he remembers school and the times he'd claimed allergies because of how the lab worried at his senses, disinfectant-sharp everywhere.) 

Holmes reminds him a bit of a library – old paper, and an odd hint of leather. That becomes less odd when he sees the gloves the man perpetually wears. 

In his own way, he loves it, this new and madcap life; despite (or perhaps because of) the chases and random shooting and being shot at, the interference from minor government employees who aren't minor at all.

Upon reflection, John thinks, Mycroft would definitely fall into the category of “despite” and he's never going to get used to the battleground the kitchen has evolved into.

“Sherlock!” he calls, his shirt drenched in whatever experiment Sherlock decided to put on top of the cabinet. 

He gets a noncommittal noise in response. 

“What experiments have you got on right now?”

“Nothing that serious, John,” Sherlock comments from the sofa. “Though you ought to change out of that shirt.”

At that point, John's busy glaring at the ruin of his shirt – his almost-new shirt, and he'd liked it, damn it all – and the words take a moment to register. “What? Why?” 

“Because the acid you just spilled all over yourself is mildly corrosive, particularly to natural fibres and skin.”

Those words, on the other hand, take no time to register at all, and John's undoing his buttons with quick but steady hands, shedding the shirt and hoping he's only imagining the itch spreading across his skin.

“I hate you right now,” he mutters. “The feeling may well persist indefinitely. Why would you put an acid on top of one of the cabinets, Sherlock?”

“So it would be out of the way. Somehow, I forgot to factor your occasional bouts of clumsiness into the equation.” Sherlock's voice is closer this time; he's levered himself out of the sofa, wandering into the kitchen. He's probably drawn by the opportunity to see the effects of acid on human skin, the prat.

“Oh, yes. I'm standing in the kitchen shirtless and cultivating a chemical burn. This is clearly the time to insult me.”

“Mildly corrosive, John. You'll be fine.”

“If I'm fine, then why are bits of my arm turning red?” He shoves some of Sherlock's experiments aside without much care for the contents to get at the sink. The itch isn't in his head, it's on his arm, and it's quickly progressing from itch to burn, even as he turns the tap on and shoves his arm underneath it.

There's a distressed “those were at a delicate stage!” from Sherlock, and John uses his free hand to raise two fingers in his general vicinity. The burn subsides back to an itch under the onslaught of cold water.

“I thought we'd decided there were going to be 'chemical' and 'chemical-free' zones in the kitchen. I even drew a bloody _map_ , Sherlock.”

The map is tacked to the fridge with three magnets, the counters and table in the kitchen sketched out with nearly-architectural precision. Nearly two-thirds of the counters are shaded a biohazard red, and about two weeks after it had gone up, Sherlock had added the notation “Terms acceptable - note lack of delineated spaces for human remains indicates entire kitchen fair game” in his distinct handwriting, a scrawl that managed to appear both cramped and fluid.

“You did create a map,” Sherlock replies, easing his disturbed experiments back into some sense of order, or whatever passes for order inside his mind. John tries not to think about the inner workings of Sherlock's head; normally, it just ends up making his own ache.

“A map you agreed to. There were borders. A system.”

“A stable routine is inherently both safe and dull, John. You must never lose your ability to react to unexpected scenarios.”

Sherlock's vaguely sanctimonious tone would be too much to take when he _isn't_ staving off a burn. John abandons his dignity and pulls his arm out from under the tap's flow, flicking a fistful of water at Sherlock. It catches him full in the face and he startles like an angry cat. All he's missing is the hiss.

“Childish.”

“You must never lose your ability to react to unexpected scenarios, Sherlock.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “I don't believe you truly want to instigate a conflict of escalating aggressions.”

He's got half his arm and shoulder shoved under the tap, and most of his weight is braced by his bad shoulder, which is starting to complain. “No, Sherlock. I wanted to make tea. Possibly also toast, although I should know better than to get my hopes up. Now, though, I want a new shirt.”

He half expects a murmured 'dull' from Sherlock – instead, the man seizes on his discarded shirt as if the flat is a murder scene and it's the critical clue, or a dismembered body part. It can keep the fingers company, surely they've been lonely.

“At the least, I can measure the deterioration rates of cotton.”

John is not at all surprised. “You're out of luck, Sherlock. Much as how I am out of a shirt. A _cotton-blend_ shirt.”

If nothing else, the face Sherlock makes as he drops the shirt is hilarious, a return to the disgruntled cat expression he'd had earlier. “Useless.”

“It was not. It worked quite well as a shirt. I liked that shirt. It was a nice shirt, despite its ill-advised flirtation with polyester in its youth.”

“You have other shirts.”

“Yes, but this one didn't even get to die for science.” Behind him, Sherlock has begun to poke at his shirt, or the remnants of it.

“I wouldn't say that. Someday I may need to measure the rates of acid decay for someone with a fondness for rather pedestrian clothing.”

John shakes his head. “Remember who does the fractional amount of laundry you don't send to the cleaners.”

“Point taken,” Sherlock concedes. “I wouldn't want you to do anything drastic.”

John spares a glance behind him: Sherlock is leaning against the kitchen table, carefully avoiding the beakers and distillation unit behind him, the agents of his empire. He'd been working on something there earlier, and he still has his shirtsleeves rolled up. Against the deep color of his shirt, his wrists are very pale.

“I won't do anything drastic if you'll replace the shirt.” He decides to take the sigh as a sign of resigned agreement, and focuses his gaze forwards once more. Consequently, when Sherlock reaches out, John nearly jumps at the touch on his upper arm.

Sherlock's hand easily maps the expanse of scars on his left - not the scar from being shot. He's avoided that entirely, skirting around the edges of it once before settling on the much older scars that mark his upper arm. His fingers are warm.

“What sort of dog? You would have been young when it happened, perhaps ten.”

“Younger than that. And I don't remember.” It's an easy lie, and none of them are dogs, after all.

“It must have been serious.”

“It was deep. My mother nearly had a fit.” 

“Only nearly?” Sherlock asks, moving his hand away. He hovers over the bullet wound, the raised scar, much newer, on that shoulder.

“Sensible woman, my mum.”

“So you say. The sniper was above you. Rooftop?”

John swallows against the dry dust in his throat. His other arm has ceased to itch, but even after he turns the tap off, he doesn't turn around. 

There are things John could say, here – no, he was above me, but only because I was a wolf at the time, and he was standing, until I ripped his throat out and then I had to shift with the bullet still in my shoulder and take it out myself – but his only response is to nod.

Sherlock traces lightly over the wound once, his fingers a whisper over the scar, and leaves the room.

-

Two days later, there's a package on the kitchen table when he comes back from work, come in by the post and likely brought up to the flat by Mrs. Hudson. It's addressed to him.

A certain distrust of packages has developed as a necessary survival skill, so John eyes the bag on the table warily for a moment, coming in close and circling it once. It is, by all accounts, a perfectly normal bag from a perfectly normal shop, and that, more than anything else, makes it suspicious. 

Sherlock stalks into the kitchen, a dramatic swirl of black wool and annoyance, interrupting John's standoff with the package.

“It isn't hazardous to your health.”

“Does it in any way contain an explosive or incendiary device?” he asks. It's best to cover all the options.

Sherlock doesn't bother answering, just stalks over to the bag and rips out its contents, shoving them into John's hands – it's a shirt, a better than match for the one Sherlock's chemical misadventures ruined, and it's – of course – perfectly his size.

Sherlock sweeps out of the room before he can say thank you.

-

There's a length of thick chain, sturdy metal links and a solid clasp, coiled up like a snake and resting in the bottom of his dresser drawer. Growing up, it was from time to time useful, even essential, to pass as something else. He's too big for a proper wolf, John knows. Harry, with her lighter frame, might pass. Others werewolves, men much taller and heavier than he, look like something closer to monsters once they've changed.

John's on the larger side of extraordinary, for people who want to mistake him as a dog.

Sherlock probably knows about it, the length of chain in his dresser drawer, because Sherlock knows about nearly everything.

Sherlock doesn't know what it means, though, and that's enough of a secret for John to keep.

Of course, this does mean that Sherlock probably has some god-only-knows theory about it. That aspect of all of this, John tries not to think about, for his own sanity.

Still, it's a length of chain coiled and hidden at the bottom of his dresser drawer. And if sometimes he runs his hand along the cool length of it, he'll never tell.

-

Five pips, and Sherlock's treating it like it's the best game ever, like it's all his Christmases come at once. John can't get the smell of explosive out of his clothes and hair, the entire flat covered with it, like a layer of dust over everything, a smear that won't wipe off. 

John's hearing is sharp enough that he can pick up every word the old woman's saying, and more than that. He can hear how terrified she is – the first woman was crying, pushing words past her tears, and he hadn't been close enough to the phone to catch all of the conversation Sherlock had with the man the bomber had rigged up as the second pip. Just a rush of noise, of cars and buses and people, and the thin thread of a sobbing voice.

But the woman is alone, and there's nothing but her high, thin voice. A bit like a bird, or like breaking bones, until it snaps completely and Sherlock goes silent and very still.

She was so scared, and they didn't save her. It's not a game, but Sherlock seems unwilling to treat it like anything else, and John's not entirely sure he can take it anymore. All of it, somehow, suddenly, far too much.

“Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them.” 

Sherlock says it with all the certainty of a fact, or of a deduction, surer and stronger than truth. But he's wrong. There are things in this world beyond Sherlock's understanding, John knows. Like werewolves. 

And, apparently, heroes.

-

When Sherlock shoots the vest, the blast takes out most of the stalls, a remarkable amount of the wall, and possibly even some of the ceiling, which just goes to show that Moriarty's both psychotic and an overachiever. As soon as he shoots, Sherlock shifts his weight, moving towards John and slamming them both into the nearby stall. The explosion's a rush of noise and wind, steel-grey and underwater-blue and nothing at all like Afghanistan. It swallows him, presses him down into unconsciousness despite his attempts to fight it.

John comes to, and he's pinned down. The rubble's pressing in on both of them, and the weight feels worse than it is – everything hurts, a fresh pain that will age into an ache, but he can push the bits of wall off of him. Sherlock is worse off, out cold and pinned by heavier pieces of building, twisted metal and concrete. Though the other man has a pulse and is breathing, the latter's a strained hiss fighting against the weight pressing against his chest. John weighs the options and dangers in his head against the lack of sirens and wet warmth he can feel spreading against Sherlock's thigh, the bit he can get at that isn't pinned.

“You're not going to like me very much for this.” Sherlock doesn't respond, for the very good reason that he's unconscious, paler than he should be despite the dust covering him. 

It's not so much that he's stronger as a wolf, though he is, as that he's stronger in different ways. When it comes to pulling something, there's no comparison. All of his medical training quails at the thought of what this might do to Sherlock if he's got any spinal injuries, but the simple fact is John can't treat the wound in his thigh unless he somehow gets Sherlock clear of the debris on top of him, and he can't wait for the paramedics to show up.

Shifting hurts, like the change is punching him squarely in the chest and stealing away all his breath. His ears, even after he's shifted, are still ringing, but that's all the remnants of the explosion. 

At the least, Sherlock's ridiculously expensive and well-crafted shirts are coming in handy in saving his life, John thinks after he shifts, wincing as his three bruised and one broken rib protest, and buries his teeth in Sherlock's collar. A cheaper shirt might well have ripped, and yes, underneath the pain and the panic there is something intensely satisfying about getting to tear into a shirt that costs more than a quarter of his wardrobe likely does. But it is a good thing it does – the shirt tears but holds as John drags him slowly, so slowly, free of the rubble on top of him. 

He's luckier than he has any right to be, because he gets Sherlock all the way clear and nothing shifts and buries them in several more feet of rubble. Even with his heightened hearing, though, John still can't hear any sirens, but he can't care about that either, shifting again (biting back pain as his ribs scream at the change) and pressing hasty hands against the still-bleeding wound.

The panic ebbs as soon as actually gets a look at the wound. It's hard to see in the flickering lights of the ruined pool, but John can still tell that while the wound is deep, it missed the femoral. Tearing off his own shirt, he presses it against the wound, waiting for the sound of sirens.

“Yes, it's none too clean, I know,” he murmurs. “You'll just get a fantastic course of antibiotics when this is all said and done.”

The blood starts soaking into his shirt, the fabric turning damp as it he holds it there. Copper-smell, metallic, coating the back of his throat. 

“I'm going to start a tally of shirts of mine you've managed to ruin. Here's another one you owe me.” Sherlock's pulse is strong and his breathing steady, but the possibility of internal bleeding is terrifying, and John can't do anything for that. He feels more helpless now than when he was decked up in semtex.

If Sherlock has a phone on him, it's nowhere he can reach. Moriarty took his phone when he had John grabbed and destroyed it in front of him ( _wouldn't want you getting your hopes up, Johnny_ ). A piece of rubble shifts. He hopes Moriarty is dead, hopes the blast caught him up and blew him into pieces, but he can't smell anything but concrete and rust, chlorine and Sherlock's blood.

There are things John can say to Sherlock, now that they've had half a building fall of them and, more importantly, now that Sherlock's unconscious.

“You won't ever know this but if you die, I will never forgive you.”

If Sherlock were awake, he'd have known what John wasn't saying, the volumes that lay unspoken in the tone of his voice and features of his face and the tense weight of his hands against the wound on Sherlock's leg. 

But he's not, so he won't, and when John speaks again, it's barely a whisper.

“You're so clever, the cleverest person I've met, but you don't know everything. You haven't figured it out.”

There's blood on his hands and a warmth spreading through the crumpled mess of his shirt.

“I wonder what'll happen when you do.”

Maybe it would have been better, if Sherlock had figured it out before. Before he got so used to Sherlock, before he got so fucking attached. Before, when John could have left if he'd had to, if Sherlock had turned away or told him to go.

It's an odd moment for introspection, or maybe it's the perfect moment for introspection, since he can't do anything else but wait. 

“I killed a man for you the day after we met.” The realization that follows hurts more than the ribs, more than the crushing weight of all this concrete. 

It was always too late. 

The thought is an unwelcome inevitability. It would bring him to his knees, were he not already crouched, close to crawling. There are far easier people to love than Sherlock Holmes.

The sirens and shouting, when they come, are a relief, pulling him away from his thoughts. He registers Lestrade and the others, once the rescue workers clear away the rubble, pull him off of Sherlock and pack them into separate ambulances.

If Sherlock dies, John will never forgive him.

(If Sherlock dies, John will find Moriarty and rip his fucking throat out.)

-

His tally of injuries reads as follows:

-Two broken ribs (both greenstick breaks and thus ignored, as his own healing will easily take care of them)  
-Three bruised ribs  
-One lightly sprained wrist (left, of course, just to make his life increasingly difficult)  
-Remnants of a concussion (thanks to Moriarty's rough handling)

All in all, John's had worse. 

Sherlock comes through it with a worryingly bad concussion, a deep but non-serious wound to his upper thigh, and some severe abdominal bruising from having half a wall fall of him. Until he starts passing urine with blood in it, the doctors are more worried about John's condition than his.

“It's visible haematuria, Sherlock.” John says, standing by Sherlock's bedside. 

“Barely visible.” Sherlock replies, sullen.

“Somehow, I doubt your battered kidneys care how visible the blood in your urine happens to be, just that it's there at all. You're not leaving.”

Sherlock runs a frantic hand through his hair, snarling on knotted curls. He doesn't even wince, just keeps on pulling. John grip tightens on the railing edge of Sherlock's bed, knuckles whitening as he forces his hands steady.

“I can't do anything from here,” Sherlock finally says, his gaze locked on the window of his room as he speaks. 

“Sherlock -”

“Lestrade didn't find a body. Even the Yard can figure out what that means. Moriarty's alive, undoubtedly, and so it will all continue. The only question is what he'll do next.” 

“He may have gotten out of that, but he couldn't have gotten away without some sort of injury. He'll have to take time to heal as well.”

“No signs of a major injury,” Sherlock recites, his gaze shifting back to John.

“Just because the Yard didn't find a blown-off arm or leg doesn't mean the concussive force from the blast couldn't have caught him with some serious damage. You know, internal injuries and the like. Perhaps he's also pissing blood right now.”

“One can only hope,” Sherlock says, before fixing his full attention on John. His gaze is a welcome weight; perhaps he should worry over just _how_ welcome he finds it, but he was nearly blown up not too long ago. John has larger concerns at the moment than his own rebellious heart.

“What did he say to you?” John's been expecting the question.

“I've already given my statement to Lestrade, Sherlock. Once you can manage to walk, you can bother him for it. It's all in there.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes in irritation or intense concentration. “John,” he begins after a moment, “is there a particular reason for your hesitance on this event. Did Moriarty -”

John rushes to cut Sherlock off; the man's attempts at treating the situation delicately are almost painful to watch. Endearing, in its own way, but painfully so. “I was drugged, kidnapped, and decked out in a truly ridiculous amount of semtex, Sherlock, because Moriarty is both psychotic and an overachiever. It wasn't fun, but that was it.” 

That was it, and John's very careful not to think on it: he doesn't think about coming to in that van, with Moriarty across from him, wearing a smile that was sharper than the knives the hired muscle next to him was fond of. Doesn't think about shaking the confusion of the drug from his system to the sound of that voice, of _good boy, Johnny_ and _aren't you going to be the very best of surprises_. 

“John...” Sherlock's looking at him, his expression set, and John sinks into the uncomfortable hospital chair, which does his ribs no favours. 

“He was incredibly smug and when I wasn't worried about being blown to bits or having impressive post-traumatic recollections of my tours in Afghanistan, I passed the time cultivating a strong desire to punch him in the face. Satisfied?”

“Not entirely, but it'll do.” 

“Good. Fine. Wonderful. I can keep pulling up synonyms, or we can drop it.” Sherlock lets the matter drop, though, for which John is grateful. 

It's nearly impossible to keep anything from Sherlock, of course, and sometimes John feels that, to Sherlock, everything John thinks or feels is written on his skin, for the other man to read at his leisure. In all likelihood, it's fairly close to the truth.

Now, though, he has two secrets to keep from Sherlock Holmes, and one was difficult enough to manage. He can do this, he thinks, but only because Sherlock would find the idea that John is attracted to him just as unlikely as the idea of John being a werewolf. He's not sure what it says about his life, that love and lycanthropy are considered equally impossible events.

“So, how long before I can convince the doctors to release me?” Sherlock pokes idly at his IV. John bats his hand away.

“The doctor heading your case is a trauma specialist and is likely here by Mycroft's orders, so I don't think it's them you need to convince.”

“Meddler.”

“A meddler, maybe, but one who's footing the extra expenses for private rooms and a top specialist, unless you've been paying for it out of your vast financial resources without telling me.”

“Were that the case, I'd injure the wall more than I already do.”

John nearly laughs at that; the pain in his ribs catches him. “Please don't. The wall doesn't deserve it.”

“Please -” Sherlock begins, but John cuts him off by standing, rushed familiar footsteps echoing on the edges of his hearing. It gives a few seconds to prepare for Harry, hurring towards him with the desperate speed of her own worry. 

They may not get on, but that doesn't stop her from caring for him. John's beginning to truly sympathize.

“Harry,” he says. Harry, however, seems intent on reassuring herself of John's continued presence, burying her head in the crook of his neck and breathing in deep. She's muttering something under her breath that might well be 'you utter idiot.'

“Sherlock, Harry; Harry, Sherlock.”

Harry pulls back far enough to look at Sherlock, her eyes red-rimmed. 

“Charmed,” they both say at once, and ribs be damned, John can't help but laugh.

-


	2. Chapter 2

-

The aftermath of the hospital is oddly anticlimactic. Moriarty, for all intents and purposes, disappears despite the best efforts of Sherlock and Mycroft to find him. That he could vanish from Sherlock's net is alarming, but that he managed to do the same from Mycroft's endless resources and close personal relationship with the entire country's CCTV network is _terrifying._

An uneventful summer bleeds into an equally uneventful autumn. John picks up more hours at the clinic, though not enough to keep him from going with Sherlock on cases, and undergoes an amazingly amiable mutual breakup with Sarah.

About which, Sherlock, of course, knows the moment he walks in the door.

“Was it your decision or hers, then?” he asks.

“Both, really,” John says. He's exhausted. No matter how well it went, the 'really we're better as friends' conversation is always draining. Though, he's never had the 'maybe we're better as friends and I'm also tired of wondering if you're going to get shot or stabbed or blown up' variant. 

John had decided not to introduce the 'also, seem to be hopelessly attracted to flatmate, sorry, am clearly a miserable idiot' line of conversation when talking to Sarah – it seemed best for everyone's sanity.

At the least, he's still got his job.

It's _comforting_ , oddly enough. He keeps the flat from falling into complete chaos and disarray, and life never becomes routine – with Sherlock, that would be impossible – and John learns enough tricks that, between him and Mrs. Hudson, he can even manage to get Sherlock to eat something when he's on a case. Mostly, this consists of him giving Sherlock mugs of tea that's more sugar and milk then tea, but it seems to work, or at least keep his blood sugar up so he doesn't fall over in a hypoglycemic faint.

Not routine, not ordinary, but an odd sort of wonderful. He's just started to get used to it when everything changes.

-

It starts with a case. 

It's late November, and it's cold enough to feel like January. Freakish weather. John honestly wouldn't be surprised if it started snowing, though the rest of London would likely act like it was the bloody apocalypse. As it is, there's been near constant rain, the most dismal of all possible weathers. The cold and the damp make his shoulder ache, and he rubs at it absently as he walks up the stairs to the flat. 

“If I never see another person with the flu again, it'll be too soon,” he announces when he enters, shrugging out of his coat and shivering as his hair drips water down the back of his neck.

“I did say you'd need an umbrella,” Sherlock says. He's staring intently at the wall above the sofa, which has mutated since John saw it this morning, chronicling the spread of the current case.

“Yes, when you made the prediction that when it has rained every single day for two solid weeks, it will proceed in the same dismal vein. Brilliant deduction there.”

“Meteorology is an inexact science.” Sherlock hasn't ceased his contemplation of the spread of notes and pictures before him – John, from his position by the door – can see a map of London covered in push-pins and string in a variety of colors. There's long lists stuck to the edges of it all that look like receipts, or orders, and various photographs of rusted cargo frieghters. 

Footsteps on the stair behind interrupt John's prepared rebuttal, and Mrs. Hudson calls out a cheerful greeting from behind him. She's laden down with a few bags.

“Evening, John – oh dear, but you're a sight.” She tuts and brushes at the collar of his jumper, where the rain has managed to get past the protection of his coat. “Going about in this terrible weather. You'll catch cold.”

“If it hasn't happened so far, Mrs. Hudson, I think I may well be immune.”

“Or incubating some terrible sickness,” Sherlock adds. “If you start to develop a pustulant skin condition, do let me know.”

“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson chides. “And then you'd starve within the space of a week, like or not.”

“I do end up with most of the cooking around here, don't I.” John wonders aloud. He's not even that good at cooking, skills developed out of necessity. This is not the least of reasons why his life is infinitely strange.

“You eat more than I do. It's only fair.”

“You don't eat often or enough to keep a mouse alive. Turn sideways and you'd disappear,” Mrs. Hudson says, and deposits her bags and a receipt on the table, finding a spot yet unmolested by Sherlock's ever-expanding army of chemistry supplies.

“Sherlock caught me on the way out,” she explains to John. “So I picked up a few things from the shop for you.” She pats his shoulder twice on the way out.

“You did the shopping by proxy. I don't know whether to be impressed or despair.”

“Settle for impressed. I'm about to get much more impressing.” Sherlock tries to tug him over to his wall of photographs and notes; John evades his hand long enough to start water for tea. They have milk now, after all. 

“I think I'd rather settle for despair – it'll save me some steps, in the end,” John says, but moves over to the wall, a swirl of facts and figures, and none of it makes any sense to him for a long moment. 

“It's a bunch of maps and receipts – for shipping lines?” The docks are clearly lined in red, each major area labeled neatly with a number, and each number corresponds to a receipt or cargo manifest. 

“Exactly; but far more important here is what isn't on the receipts.”

John looks at the lists again, but the products and quantities all seem perfectly normal to him. “You may have to break this down a bit for us mere mortals.”

“It's a question of capacity.” Sherlock is utterly absorbed in the lists before him, and John can only wonder what it's like for him, to see a pile of facts and connect them together. A bit like seeing the constellation instead of an erratic collection of stars.

“Based on their dimensions, up until sixteen months ago, each of these warehouses had been stocked full to capacity. Now, the records show that they're always loading roughly the same amount less into each of them every month. Of course, they have excuses, but a pattern like this, over so long - do you know what that all means, John?” Sherlock asks. John doesn't, not entirely, but the draw of tea saves him.

“It's a smuggling ring. And a fantastically elaborate one at that.” John pours the water and turns to watch Sherlock launch into a detailed explanation of how he can tell precisely what each location must be shipping out and from where, though there are a few gaps in his data. He is brilliant, the brightest thing in the room by far. 

“Just to check then, not a Chinese one, this time round?” He sips at his tea as Sherlock waves his hands in frantic rebuttal. One day, the man is going to smack someone clear across the face in accidental enthusiasm. John rather hopes he's there, and that it's Anderson Sherlock manages to hit.

“No – this ring in particular must focus exclusively on drugs, based on how little space they're leaving in each warehouse – the objects they're moving are themselves small, and they're cost issues otherwise. Lestrade's had some reports that corroborate this as well. They're moving them through in excessive quantities and this level of organization and internal coherence is unusual for an operation their size.” 

John waits until Sherlock's calmed his gesticulations and presses a mug of tea into the one closest to him. He begins to drink nearly automatically, even though John's put enough sugar in it to terrify a diabetic. Calories are calories, he supposes, whether they come in solid or liquid form.

Small victories. On long cases he contemplates the merit of sedatives and an IV.

“Why do you say that? Wouldn't any large smuggling ring have to be well organized? Lestrade and the Yard aren't incompetent -”

“Aren't they?” Sherlock says, and John glares at him, settling into his chair.

“Not all the time, Sherlock, no. They're good enough at what they do to catch a smuggling ring that was bad at what it did.”

Sherlock sips again at his tea and pulls a face. “Honestly John, I had dinner with you yesterday, I'm hardly wasting away before your eyes. This is excessive.”

“You'd make a terrible Victorian heroine, it's true. All the fainting and being ineffectual – I don't think you could bear it.” 

Sherlock sighs and John swaps tea with him. Sherlock tries his, but pulls another face. “Too much milk by half.”

He doesn't stop drinking, though. Small steps.

-

Looking back, John realizes that this case was the start of it. In one case, Sherlock manages to set events in motion that fuck everything up spectacularly. 

Right now, though, he's a bit concerned with how they're busy trying not to get noticed by the people with guns.

They warehouse they've snuck into is, somehow, colder on the inside, damp and still. 

“You said this was reconnaissance only, Sherlock,” John warns him, grabbing the other man's shoulder and pulling him lower down behind the crates they're crouched behind. Sherlock's damnably tall, all spindly legs and arms, and while he may pull it off as far as looks go, it doesn't help much in the 'hiding behind small objects' department. 

They do manage to stay hidden, but they're forced fairly close together to do so; John's pressed up against the long line of Sherlock's side and hip. He reminds his libido that, really, now is not the time.

“It _is_ reconnaissance, John,” Sherlock whispers back. “Just from what we've seen, I've identified six locations where they're smuggling their goods into the country. They've at least two other drop-off points, but the data for those is still inconclusive.”

“Explain it later. I'm sure I'll be quite impressed. But right now, we need to leave before the people with the guns find us.”

“That may have just become remarkably more difficult,” Sherlock hisses. “If we're together, they'll catch us for certain. Split up, and meet back at Baker Street.” 

“Wait – what? Sherlock, no -” John starts, but he doesn't have time to finish. They've already been spotted, and Sherlock's off like a shot, running toward one of the exits, his long coat flying behind him like an awkward pair of wings as the shadows of the warehouse swallow him.

This is a bad idea, splitting up is always, _always_ a bad idea. Hasn't Sherlock ever seen any horror movie, ever? Even if it is the only way to make sure they both don't get shot, he hates it.

“Fuck this,” John curses, and runs, doing his best to attract the most attention. His 'I'm a target' impression is admirable, and he's able to draw a sizable number of them out of the warehouse. He can hear them coming before they're anywhere near him, and plays a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with them, ducking through the shadows of abandoned industry. 

They manage to catch up with him only once, and he comes out of it with a long slash along his ribs for his trouble. Too close quarters for guns, but of course they'd have knives. It's probably some clause in the thug-smuggler bylaws: carry knives.

But when he gets back to Baker Street, the flat is empty.

-

Mycroft doesn't find out, of course, because Mycroft, all-knowing Mycroft, all-seeing Mycroft, might-as-well-be-fucking-god Mycroft, already _knows,_ and John wants to shift and rip through him for it, wants to bloody up his expensive suit, and barely cages the growl that threatens to rattle out of his chest. It's his secret, his, and no one else's. 

He doesn't even care so much what gave him away. He might, later, but he can't think past the anger of it, not right now.

“A combination of your service and medical records, corroborated by personal observations and finally crystallized by the unusual tearing on Sherlock's now safely disposed-of shirt, after the events at the pool.”

Mycroft holds his gaze, and John's sure he can see every fraction of John's frustration and anger, just as John's certain Mycroft doesn't care.

“You are capable of being eminently and nearly frighteningly practical, Doctor Watson. I'm sure you can see there are more important issues at hand.”

Like ripping your throat out, John thinks, but then amends – like Sherlock, who has been missing for almost two days. Sherlock, who never made it back to Baker Street, and when John, wounded and worried, risked shifting in London and tracked back to the area around the warehouse, he found the entire complex empty, and Sherlock's scent faded, overwritten by the harsh smell of petrol and hints of blood. Not enough for a fatal wound, but enough to worry him even more. Sherlock, who is definitely hurt, and almost certainly being held somewhere within a large complex of warehouses and storage units. He'd been able to follow the scents that far.

Unfortunately, John had figured that out at the same time as the police, and the entire complex is crawling with the fine officers of the Met. In his own, official way, Lestrade's worried, but he's going to get Sherlock killed.

“Do I need to further summarize the situation at hand, or have you completed your own internal reflections upon it?” Mycroft continues, and John slumps from standing to sitting, boneless and tired in his armchair. There's a barely-scabbed slash scored across the right side of his chest, and it aches.

“He's in there, Mycroft. I tracked him there, I can find him -”

“Were it not for the dedicated presence of the Metropolitan Police, who may not be able to find Sherlock but will most certainly be able to shoot a – shall we say, 'wild dog' – of your size on sight.” His umbrella taps at the scratched wooden floor of the flat, punctuating the end of his sentence with a deliberation that appears nearly rehearsed.

“So why are you wasting our time? Can't you clear them off the area, and let me find him?” 

Mycroft stares at him, his head tilted ever so slightly as he considers John. It's a rather Sherlock sort of stance and, correspondingly, a rather Sherlock sort of expression that crosses his face. For a moment, he looks like what he is – Sherlock's brother.

“Some matters require a bit more precision than that – particularly considering who's attention Sherlock has attracted of late.”

He fights back the snarls and the memories of scents - dust and death, the pale and sickly scent of fear and the overpowering chemical sting of chlorine. 

“This is him – all of this is Moriarty, again?”

“It's difficult to say, even for me. Despite what you may think, Doctor Watson, I am not, in fact, omniscient.”

“The bloody hell you're not,” John can't help but mutter. Mycroft, surprising him, smiles at it.

“If only. It would certainly make my work much easier. But while I do not know whether the particular warehouse Sherlock was investigating was tied directly to Moriarty, the network of drugs trafficking that it belongs to, however marginally, is almost certainly his work.”

“I should have ripped his throat out at the pool.” 

Mycroft's mobile beeps, and he pulls it from a pocket, glancing at it before returning the device. “While I do rather wish you had, that doesn't help us now. Understand, Doctor, that I've taken great care to maintain this particular fiction.”

“And that fiction is?”

“Let's simply say that if Moriarty is in fact unaware of your condition, I would rather he remain that way.”

He picks up on the sound of the front door opening as Mycroft's finishing his sentence, hears the thump of booted feet and the soft scratch of a dog's claws on wood as their new visitors climb the stairs. 

The man who enters is tall and broad-shouldered, and from his scent, keeps three dogs himself. He stance is straight, military-rest softened around the edges by civilian life. There's something familiar about his scent, but John can't exactly place it. One of the man's dogs pads beside him into the room, and sits beside the man as he introduces himself as Doyle.

“Thank you for your prompt response,” Mycroft says by way of greeting. 

“Well, you said it was urgent.”

“Indeed. John, Doyle is already very well acquainted with your particular nature.”

The man nods. “Known that sort all my life, after all.” John places his scent then – wolf-but-not-quite-kind.

“You're not, though.” It's not a question, but Doyle shakes his head anyway. The man's almost infuriatingly cheerful. 

“You know how it is. Touch and go if you're getting it from only one side. My sister's got it through and through, but I've just picked up some of the castoffs.”

Bleedthrough, transference, genetics – they don't know everything about it. That is how it works, though Harry's the same as John, through and through.

“Hence the dogs.” At that, as if he's aware he's the subject of conversation, the dog beats his tail against the wooden floor. His coloring's close to an Alsatian, but if so he's the biggest one John's ever seen.

“Hence the dogs,” Doyle confirms, scratching at the thick fur behind his dog's pricked ears as he does. “Zibo here's mostly Shiloh Shepherd, and a bit of what-all. He's damn good at what he does, but he can't quite track a trail this old, not quick enough to matter. He's to be your double, though you're likely to be a bit bigger than he is, and your coloring won't exactly match.”

John stares at the grey-and-tan coloured dog; Zibo meets his gaze for a second before averting his eyes, ears flicking back before pricking forwards again, Doyle's hand no doubt reassuring presence. Dogs have a proper understanding of pack.

Mycroft's mobile chirps, and he pulls it out of his inner breast pocket to examine the received text.

“The appropriate calls have been placed, as the police's own attempts to locate Sherlock with their canine units have failed. As I stated, considering who may well be orchestrating this, a suddenly and inexplicably appearing canine of your size, doctor, is more information than I'd like to provide.”

Doyle gestures to the dog, who lies down immediately. “Zibo'll stay here -”

“And I'll head to the scene with you, and we reverse the swap afterward, got it.” John shakes his head. “Hell, but this is going to involve a collar, isn't it?”

“Sorry Doctor, but it'll have to. I can easily remember how much my sister hated that, but there's nothing for it, with SAR rules and that many officers at the scene.”

“At least, you'll be used to this, then,” John sighs, pulling his jumper off and folding it, leaving it a neat white rectangle on the arm of the sofa. Standing tall, he meets Mycroft's eyes, and throws his own challenge against the cool consideration in them before he shifts, feels the familiar not-pain of bone and muscle rearranging, the sharpening of senses, the growth of fur. 

He's never been the quickest at the change – Harry could beat him at it every single time, growing up – but it's still only the work of a few moments before he's fully shifted, a solid mass of not-quite-wolf. The smells of the apartment hit him in a rush – the warm, honey scent of meat (Sherlock's latest experiment in decomposition); the more sickly sweetness of something gone past its expiration date (Sherlock's earlier experiment on the same theme.) Earth, fur and gunmetal, he recognizes as his own self, but over everything is old paper and wool-warmth, the shifting edge of pressed clothes and chemicals that comprises Sherlock, always, always, Sherlock. 

He'd know that scent anywhere, and he noses at the edge of his Sherlock's discarded scarf, the familiar scent of that skin so visceral he might as well be in the room.

John's only risked shifting in the flat a few times, when Sherlock's out and only ever behind the locked door of his room, never down here. Everything's so much _more_ , and when he meets Mycroft's eyes now, he sees the same cool consideration, though that is sharper too, the assessment in the man's eyes honed. 

Doyle's dog seems to shrink, pressing his head against his forepaws, submission in the line of his back. John moves forward, sniffs idly at the dog once ( _smooth leather and the sharp bite of petrol, stone and dark earth, the hint of rain_ ) and then moves away, to stand next to Doyle. The tension bleeds out of Zibo once he does.

“Right then,” comes Doyle's voice. “Please try not to bite me over this, Doc.” Hands, about his throat, and even through he's warned it's a close thing as heavy metal encircles his neck, his fur ruffling against its weight.

It's stifling and nearly choking, a band too tight about his throat. Doyle's hands are strong and sure, though, without the barest trace of hesitation in them, and that competence is comforting in its own way.

The leash that links about to the collar is far less so, and he can't hold back the growl that rumbles out of his throat. 

“Sorry, Doc. I do most of my tracking off leash, but you'll have to bear it until we get past the police.”

Mycroft shifts his weight; John's ears prick forward, catching at the rustle of his suit. 

“If we're all settled, perhaps we could turn to the matter at hand?”

It's a bit of trick, getting what he means across when he's in this form, but his irritation shows through clearly enough, though he does his best to hide his worry.

Mycroft sighs. “Time is rather of the essence, Dr. Watson,” he says, as if John weren't very much aware of that already. There's the click-click of a woman's heels climbing up the stairs, and Mycroft's assistant pushes the door to the flat open, her scent a breeze of pressed linen and, oddly enough, gunpowder. John doesn't question it. Mycroft, in comparison, smells like nothing else so much as an old typewriter John's father used to have – ink and oil, precision and gun-metal grey.

“We're all ready for you, sir,” Anthea states, moving over to perch delicately on the arm of the sofa, next to Zibo. 

“Excellent. This should be sorted in a matter of hours.”

A smile flickers at the corners of her face. “I'll resist the urge to straighten up, somehow.”

The sight of that smile stays with John as he yields to the bare hint of pressure from the leash, letting Doyle lead them out of the flat and into the enveloping cocoon of warm leather of Mycroft's car.

-

When Doyle opens the door and lets him out, the sensations of the crime scene hit him in a rush: the flashing lights of the police cars; the scurrying activity of people he knows by name but not by scent; the smells of the scene itself – rust and metal from the warehouses, and over it all the pressing dampness of what will be rain, come an hour or so.

“Come on, Zibo,” Doyle says, and John does, though the irritation at being treated like a dog never goes away. The cant of Doyle's stance states how sorry the man is about having to treat him like this, and that helps. 

If it gets him Sherlock, he doesn't much care.

“You're the SAR unit, then?” Lestrade, a rush of leaves and pavement and the ever-present hint of coffee. Lestrade's scent is a rush of overwork and sleeplessness; it always is.

“Doyle Lorimer; this is Zibo.” John allows the hand on his head, fingers buried into his fur. He sits on his haunches next to Doyle, shifts his weight against the man's leg and hip and lets his tail beat against the ground; the perfect picture of a happy dog.

“That is not a dog,” comes another voice. Perhaps because of Sherlock's first deduction, Anderson comes to him as a waft of deodorant and shaving cream, too-strong and almost sour. “That is nearly a pony, or possibly a bear, and we're not honestly going to let it blunder through the crime scene.”

“Zibo is a bit of Alastian, a bit of Great Dane, and a lot of god-knows, and he's also very good at his job.” A hint of irritation threads through Doyle's voice, and John climbs to his feet at the sound of it, letting Anderson take in the sight of him on alert, hackles beginning to raise. 

“And by the sound of it, you could use our help.”

Anderson's already begun to back away; Lestrade's order gets him to flee the scene entirely. 

Lestrade sighs. “I'm sorry about that – we've been here for hours, and we're all beginning to expect a corpse. God knows I wish we weren't.” His voice is as tired as John's ever heard it and weighed down with something much worse than a lack of sleep.

“The best thing you can do is clear your men out of the area, so I can let Zibo track off-leash.”

“Alright.” Reaching through the open window of the police car he's leaning on, Lestrade pulls out a walkie-talkie and hands it to Doyle. “We're channel two; it's already set.”

Yielding to the gentle pull, John tracks through the crowd of people – Anderson, Donovan, Lestrade, other officers he knows by face but not by name. Finally, they pass under the police tape, and he's confronted with the dark shadows of the storage units and the night.

“Zibo, search and find,” and the leash is unclipped, and John darts off, ignoring the competent sounds of Doyle shadowing him, and the clomping accompaniment of the Metropolitan police, at a greater distance. 

At first, he can scent nothing but grey – the heavy threat of rain and the rust of metal. Even the night smells stale, the air thick with it. He knows Sherlock's scent better than his own but he can't trace it anywhere. The ground is muddied with various scents – the police, officers he recognizes and others he doesn't, oil-slick from cars, and the hopeful antiseptic of the waiting medics. 

But there's nothing here that's warm against all the damp gray, nothing that smells like Sherlock. He paces from one storage unit to the next, the rising tide of desperation building like an itch beneath his own fur and skin. It hurts far worse than the long, barely-closed gash scoring his own ribs. 

(Three days ago, he'd come down in the morning to find Sherlock in the kitchen, wired on caffeine and the trail of the drugs trade Lestrade had asked him to look into. He clearly hadn't slept, energy verging on frantic, all wild hair and quick words as he explained his new deductions to John. 

John thinks to himself, then that if he could come down the stairs to this every morning, could wake up to the prospect of this madcap man, that it'd be perfect, or close enough.

Which means he's certifiable, he's sure, but the thought doesn't go away, and he turns to the counter to make tea, hiding his eyes until he can chase all traces of this from them.)

It's cold, dark and damp, but he remembers that morning and thinks of it, of the light in the kitchen. Tries to imagine that moment as a scent, as _Sherlock_ , and lifts his face into the wind until he catches it, a whisper of paper and wool. 

He follows that scent like he's being called, pulled to the source of it, one particular storage unit against the great metal multitude of them. Barking, he starts to scrabble at the corners of the door, frantically pushing his weight against it as his paws scratch uselessly at the metal. He'd gut someone for opposable thumbs right now, but Doyle's there, prying the latch open and beginning to shove the door to the unit open. There's barely a crack open at first, the door heavy, hinges crusted with rust, but a crack is all John needs, wriggling through like an eel.

Paper and wool, faded but everywhere in here. 

Sherlock is slumped inside, sprawled in the damp, dark corner of the unit, propped haphazardly against the rusted metal. His breathing is ragged and pained, but so shallow it's nearly a struggle to hear it. 

The police are outside, shouting as they push at the door. The light from their torches slices through the darkness inside and Sherlock murmurs, shivers despite his coat. John's there, pressing against him, a carefully warm weight of fur as lets his head rest against the side of Sherlock neck, comforting himself with the sound of his faint but continued murmur of unintelligible words. 

He's been drugged, he reeks of it, an acrid-sharp stench. He's cut and bruised and is possibly sporting more than one seriously bruised rib. He's shivering and cold and he's lost weight he didn't have to lose. He's _alive,_ and John presses himself against Sherlock until the ambulances come.

-

ii

-

He's in the hospital for nearly a full week, and it's so very _boring._ At first, Sherlock had the spinning press of the drug in his veins to distract him, a dance led by old friends wearing new clothes. Then, those faded and fled and they limited the allotment of new drugs the button would dispense for him because they are idiots and the dullness became intolerable.

They won't let him out of his room, and while it would be easy enough to trick one or several of the nurses and doctors, someone (Mycroft, most likely, though Lestrade was also a possibility) had informed them that 'S. Holmes required constant surveillance.'

Even deducing the nurses hasn't given him any peace. If it weren't for John, he'd have bypassed the regulator on his morphine drip on the very first day they restricted it.

“Mrs. Hudson sent me with a sudoku book for you,” John says as he enters. His hair and coat are damp from the rain, but he's had time to get wet, dry off, and then get rained on again. There's also an odd smudge of grey stone dust on the edge of his left boot – taking the Tube, it seems.

“Lovely,” Sherlock says. “The next twenty minutes will be fantastically exciting.”

John draws the book out, then places it and a pen on the edge of Sherlock's bed. At this point, he undoubtedly knows better than to insult Sherlock with an offering of a pencil.

“Behave while I talk to your doctors. I could have brought by the crossword. This week's got a pop-music theme. You would've been stumped.”

“Foiled by useless information.”

“Despite all that crap telly you don't think I know you've been watching.” John sags into one of the hospital chairs near his bed. There's no wince to betray bruised or broken ribs, and in that way this is a different scene than the first time they both ended up in the hospital, all those months ago.

It'll be nearly a year since John moved in with him, Sherlock realizes. He never thought of it in units of time before, had never quite considered the merits of measuring the time John spent with him. There was the period before-John, and it was noteworthy only in comparison to now, so that all of its imperfections could easily be brought to light.

It's a quiet, insidious comfort, that John's so neatly insinuated himself into Sherlock's life. And here he is now, in an uncomfortable hospital chair and looking as though he'd spent the week in the hospital instead of Sherlock.

“Have you slept at all?”

John startles at that. “Some. It's been a bad week, all right? Just don't ask me if I've eaten. I don't think I could take the shock.”

“Fair enough.”

Some of the tension falls away from John, which is curious. He'd tell John to get some proper sleep, but it would likely have the opposite effect: each day John arrives early, more tired-looking than the night before when he left. He only manages to relax during the day, in direct defiance of what his body ought to dictate.

Curious, all of it, Sherlock thinks, and decides to solve the sudoku puzzles in record time.

“Yes, fine, you're quite the genius, Sherlock,” John says, but he's smiling.

-

It takes a certain amount of persuading (needling, John had said, call it by its proper name, Sherlock) before Lestrade let him see the case files, which Sherlock finds unfair. It was his own kidnapping, after all. He is the concerned party, and it's ridiculous that Lestrade blocks him from them for a full two weeks. It's nearly Christmas by the time he relents, and Sherlock has to solve an assault case and a deeply uniteresting homicide before accruing enough interest.

“You can't investigate your own case, Sherlock.” Lestrade hasn't been sleeping, lines and hollows around his eyes, though the effects are less pronounced than they were immediately following his kidnapping. His right hand is restless, habitual twitches that speak of his longing for a cigarette. 

He wishes he didn't have to dignify a statement like that with a response. “Lestrade, I am the individual best suited to investigate this case – even more so because I was involved in it.”

“It's going beyond a conflict of interests.”

“You're thinking of the overall applicability of the system, which is rather pointless, as I can't imagine any of the Yard presuming I'd have a place as a witness.”

Lestrade groans. “The trail's cold by now, Sherlock. Anything you might have found out – it's too late now.”

“Because you didn't let me see them earlier.”

“What, when you were as high as a bloody kite? That earlier?”

“Am I then to assume your people have made such magnificent headway with the case that my assistance is not required?” Lestrade groans at that, rubs at the side of his face. 

“Fine,” Lestrade finally says. “But they don't leave the station, Sherlock – and I _will_ check.”

Lestrade needn't have worried.

It's about as useless as he'd feared, all second and third-degree interpretations of incompetence. He has to disregard the written statement entirely, focusing on photographs and simple, unmolested observations.

The photographs summon dim memories of being cold, all the way through and down to his very bones. The drugs they'd given him had disconnected him from everything, separated him from the world. Under other circumstances, it would have been an interesting experience. 

Cold, shivering endlessly, until the end of it all. There's a memory of something, an odd impression of warmth right before they found him, but it's likely just a figment of the drugs. He'll find nothing here, he thinks, and begins to leaf through all the rest of the photographs.

It's near the end of the pile, a piece of paper in a clear evidence bag, white A4 smudged with dirt, top-left corner wrinkled.

Lines of black ink curve elegantly across the paper. 

_Well done, puppy._

He recognizes the hand immediately, even though it's on a ripped sheet of cheap A4 instead of an expensive envelope. It's even the same pen, though the ink cartridge or pen's reservoir has been changed at least once, perhaps twice. Difficult to tell, though the writer had used a different colour ink. Blue, possibly, perhaps another, different dark color. It might be important, later.

Sherlock stares at the words and thinks of dim lights on water and the scent of chlorine, the sight of John in a coat too large for him. A crying woman, and a child counting backwards from ten. He remembers words – like, _because I'm bored_ and _I like to watch you dance._

Remembers: _people do get so attached to their pets._

The files concerning his own kidnapping are splayed out on the table before him, and his hands are spread out on the dark wood, fingers pressed against the table as if he could dig his way inside. 

The explosion had knocked him out, and there's a worrying blank spot in his knowledge of the event from the blast to waking up in the hospital. He doesn't know what happened, just what John has told him. Anything could have happened, then, to them, to John, and he doesn't know. Following that, the entire network vanished overnight; even Mycroft's resources turned up next to nothing.

He turns the note over, and the sight of another line of looping script greets him.

_See you soon._

-

John's been a bit peculiar, since Sherlock returned from his most recent stint in the hospital. The insistence that he eat Sherlock can attribute to a combination of John's usual concern for him coupled by the renewed worry after his bout of too little food and too many pharmaceuticals. To be fair, neither was particularly Sherlock's choice in the matter.

It's something beyond the food, though, and the worry. He's been busy since the hospital, as many cases as he ever has on, and he hasn't had to ask John to come with him once. At the sound of Sherlock's phone beeping from a received text, and the sight of Sherlock donning his coat, John invariably drops whatever he's been working on to accompany him.

While welcome, it's a departure from established patterns of behavior, and almost alarming.

He comes back from wresting the case files from Lestrade's stranglehold grip to find John putting on his coat, nearly bumping into the man in the hallway.

“Sherlock!” John draws back a step, surprised. “Lestrade just texted me to come and collect you. Said you were going through the evidence files.”

“Done with that. Useless, all of it. I need to go there myself, so no need to-”

John cuts him off, his words as precise as a scalpel’s edge, a skill he has but doesn't always use. “Like hell you're going alone.”

There a vehemence in John's voice, a vicious denial that borders on violence. “What?”

“You heard me. You want to go back to the place where you were drugged out of your mind and held for two days? Fine, I'm used to your ideas running the gauntlet of madcap brilliance to just madcap. But I'm coming.”

The words from the note are as dark and fresh as spilled ink in his mind. They never found any sign of him. A disappearing act, but not the final trick.

“No, Sherlock. The last time we split up, you ended up in the hospital. I go with you or you don't go at all. Come on upstairs; this time, I'm bringing my gun.”

He does, and watches as John tucks his Sig away. It's begun to snow when they leave the flat, and as they wait for a cab Sherlock watches the snow fall in the dim streetlight, to begin to settle on Jon's hair. 

-

In retrospect, Sherlock realizes, John may have been right, and as his ideas run, this is trending more toward the madcap than the brilliant.

They run into them when they hit the edge of the storage complex. There are three men, which wouldn't be a problem, except for the guns that two of them have got set against John's own Sig, which has been knocked away in the fight and out of reach.

He's trying, calculating probabilities and trajectories, but he's not entirely sure how they're going to get out of this one, unarmed against three men with guns and the necessity of murder in their eyes.

One of them smiles. “Easier than he'd said it'd be.” Cocky, just like a thug, all muscle bent to someone else's will. Precisely _whose_ will is easy enough to determine, a list of possibilities narrowing inexorably down to a certain truth.

“Are you so certain your employer wants us dead?” Sherlock presses.

The thug cocks his gun. “He wants you out of the way.”

“That doesn't necessarily mean dead, you know -” Sherlock begins, because Moriarty may have overestimated the intellect of his hired help, to read 'corpse' from 'severely wounded,' but that won't stop the three from following through on their own initiative. 

John stops him.

“Don't look, Sherlock” John says. He repeats it – _don't look_ – so of course Sherlock does, turns to John in time to see his form itself ripple and _shift_ , and convulsion of bones and flesh and – and _fur_ , the lines of him, of John, breaking down and apart until he's something else, a mass of brown and dark blond that launches itself at the nearest man, tearing at his throat. 

The man screams, once, high-pitched and panicked, before the noise cuts off wetly and it – the wolf – John – is now crouched over the body. The other man fires off two shots, but the both of them go wide, and before he can manage anything else the wolf ( _John_ ) is on him, a huge mass of muscle and murder. 

It's more of a slaughter than a kill, and it's quick. John's ripped the throat out of the second man, as neatly as one could but his fur is still streaked with blood. The last man crosses himself once, muttering curses and prayers in equal measures, before rushing to attack; not at John, this time, but Sherlock, his knife thrusting forward, edge glinting in the dull streetlight.

He braces himself to dodge or deflect, but never has to. John's on the man before he's taken two steps. The man doesn't make a sound, slashing wildly before he goes entirely limp.

All in all, the attack, from start to finish, takes less than a minute. Less than a minute, and John has killed three people and become something entirely new.

When it's over, what-was-John is crouched before him, eleven stones worth of man replaced by what looks like eleven stones worth of wolf, and Sherlock has to know, has to understand how this happened, how such a thing is even possible. 

He thought he knew John, knew all of his secrets. Even if this is impossible, how could he have missed it?

“What are you?” he breathes, and once he does he realizes, not quite certain of the particulars, but sure that what he just said was a mistake. It is conceivable that, to John, the edge of curiosity in his voice cuts too closely towards the scientific. 

A curious noise rumbles forth from the wolf's – from _John's_ \- throat, a growl that breaks into a whine. His pricked ears flick backwards, lying flat against his skull, and his entire posture seems almost to deflate, curling inward on himself and slouching ever lower on his four legs. After a moment, he collects himself with what seems like a great force of will – it's so much harder for Sherlock to read him like this - and takes several loping steps forward, toward Sherlock. 

He's mastered much of himself, cut away the parts that were unnecessary, the “normal” bits that the rest of world was so insistent on, that did nothing but slow him down. So, he's not expecting the flinch that seizes him as some part of him, some stupid, _stupid_ instinct reacts to something, some buried hind brain conceptions of predators. 

And John freezes, dead in his tracks, close enough that if Sherlock reaches out, he'd just graze the points of his fur. 

“John -” Sherlock starts to say, starts to take it back, but it's entirely too late for that. With a flash of blood-tipped fur, John turns and disappears into the night, and Sherlock's left with the dim circle of streetlight and the three corpses at his feet.

He walks over, reaches down and picks up John's Sig, hiding it in the folds of his clothes and his coat as he waits for the sirens to come.

-


	3. Chapter 3

-

“I don't need that.” Sherlock waves away the man's attempts to place the orange-shock blanket about his shoulder, then does the same to the ambulance worker attempting to dress his arm. 

“I don't need that, either.”

“Sir, a cut like this is easily infected. I can't let you leave before I disinfect and dress it.” The paramedic insists, annoying, and Sherlock tries to bat the man away again.

“Stop that, and let them do their work, Sherlock,” Lestrade steps toward the ambulance. 

“Who called you?” 

Lestrade sighs and runs a hand across his brow, into his hair. “The officers who first responded. Amazingly enough, it seems that that's now standard protocol when they find you on the scene.”

“Lovely,” Sherlock murmurs. “Please go away.” 

“It's a crime scene, Sherlock.”

“Then I'll go away,” He stands, strips the blanket from his shoulders. “Take your damnable orange fleece. I don't need it.”

Lestrade doesn't much react to having a shock blanket thrown at his face, other than batting it away. 

“Where's John?” he asks.

Sherlock has always been naturally talented at lying; his brain works so quickly, after all, that he barely has to pause before calculating the most believable set of completely false circumstances. Case in point, when he had to deal with the officers who were first here, he was able to explain how the three men had threatened him with two large, feral looking attack dogs; dogs which summarily turned on their owners and mauled them to death before tearing off into the night. He'd referenced a history of animal abuse and dubious training methods, cited the unpredictability of imported wolf-hybrids and a noted lack of loyalty to human handlers. 

The officers, being deeply stupid, had believed early single word.

“I sent him after another lead. Given the confrontation here, however, it's a lead that will undoubtedly go nowhere.”

Lestrade radiates immediate concern. Interesting. “Sherlock, are you trying to get him killed? This isn't you at a crime scene with all the Met behind you, this was you against three armed men.”

Three armed men, and John ripped through them. Sherlock had never considered that John might be more dangerous without his gun than with it, that unarmed he could still possess so very many weapons. He muses over force and bite pressure (on average 1500 pounds per square inch for North American Grey Wolves) and remembers the ease with which John's sharp teeth had ripped through the man's throat, and what blood looked like all over his fur.

“John will be fine,” he says, finally, and thinks that John is fine, John can clearly take care of himself in ways Sherlock hadn't considered possible, John had crouched before him and covered with blood and had killed three men to save them both, and John had been wonderful, had been beautiful when he had done all of these things, and had been no less so this morning, when he'd set a cup of tea with too much sugar into Sherlock's waiting hand.

“Sherlock, I have three men with their throats ripped out here, and 'wild dog attack' doesn't do much to reassure the public -”

“No, those animals were clearly their dogs, and they'd mistreated them. I wasn't surprised such an animal turned on them, given the chance.”

“Christ,” Lestrade rubs at his left temple with fingers that tremble, slightly. He likely needs another nicotine patch. “Animal control's going to have a field day with this.”

“I don't imagine they'll attack anyone who doesn't threaten them first.”

“Because gangs of thugs using _attack dogs_ are known for sound training methods.”

Sherlock doesn't dignify that with a response, and Lestrade turns to direct a few of his officers, shouting orders and instructions. It's cold, it'll be Christmas soon and they might even get the snow for it. His breath fogs in the air before him and Sherlock fights back a shiver, burying his gloved hands deep into the pockets of his coat. Lestrade shivers himself before turning back and addressing him once more. 

“And I thought the worst we'd seen of this was that dog fighting ring, three years back. Look, I'm going to have to see you and John in the station tomorrow at three, or I'll come around with a squad car for both of you.”

Sherlock nods and strides off, back-lit by the flashing police lights.

“And you can bloody well get John to call me when he comes back, all right?” Lestrade calls after him. “I don't want to have to call in the search and rescue squad.”

-

The shock had cleared out of his system long before the paramedics and police let him leave. The feeling is unexpected – Sherlock's been confronted with improbable events before, and has even been surprised by a few truly unexpected circumstances, but he can't recall ever being truly _startled_ , surprised enough that it dulls the keen edge of his mind, sidetracks the patterns and probabilities of his thoughts until they cycle endlessly about the impossibility of one event.

It's an unusual emotion, and he hates it from the moment he recognizes it, shaking his head to try to clear it away, feeling as if all of him were swathed in clothes sized too small to fit.

The paramedic, of course, takes his actions as warning signs for a concussion, and Sherlock spends two useless minutes deconstructing the man's life before he's able to convince him that he is, in fact, of sound and uninjured mind.

John might be proud, or perhaps relieved, that there are still circumstances in this world capable of truly shocking Sherlock. Though, Sherlock amends, perhaps John wouldn't, as those circumstances required the man himself demonstrating the apparent ability to shed his skin and turn into a wolf at will.

He wonders if it hurt, when John's anatomy rearranged itself to suit the change. Wondered what it felt like, how long John's been able to do it, how he acquired the ability. He has a long list of questions, and John's the only one who can answer any of them, and John's not here.

Clearly, _that_ is the first problem that requires his attention.

-

When he gets back to the flat, he finds Mycroft waiting for him. It's unwelcome, of course, but rather in keeping with the overall arc of the evening. The sight of his brother - standing in the flat as if he has any right to be there, umbrella perpetually at his side even though there isn't the slightest chance of rain – proves to be the final piece of evidence, neatly slotting into place in his mind.

“Which was the critical piece then – his medical or service records?”

Mycroft isn't smiling, but he's woven the smug emotion into and throughout his voice, instead. “Sherlock, I don't -”

“ _Don't you dare._ ” Sherlock strides over to the door and wrenching it open. His voice carries down the hall and he hears Mrs. Hudson scurry back into her downstairs flat at the shouting. “If you're going to attempt that sort of nonsense, Mycroft, get out. I trust you can still fit through the door.”

“Sherlock.” 

“Medical or service records?” He repeats. He hates repeating himself.

Mycroft doesn't move, holding his ground but ceding the fight. Sherlock closes the door. “Primarily his medical records. Of course, I did have the advantage of realizing what, precisely, I was looking at.”

“Oh, what, now you're going to tell me the British government is running rife with werewolves,” Sherlock says, and his voice doesn't snag on the last word at all.

“I wouldn't use the word 'rife,' no. But there are several shifters of that type functioning in key positions as field operatives, which is all you really need to know in regards to that matter.”

“Is John aware that you know?”

“Yes,” Mycroft answers immediately.

“You told him.” It's more of an accusation than a question, but Mycroft treats it as the latter anyway.

“I had to enlist his particular skills.”

Sherlock finds that, as a rule, he tends to walk the fine edge of being infuriated with Mycroft at the best of times. This is hardly the best of times, though, and of anything, it is that last comment that pushes him over the edge as his mind reels through possibilities, probabilities, of what Mycroft may have made John do.

“You leave him _alone._ ” he spits out. “He isn't one of yours, Mycroft, and you'll leave him alone.”

“I have,” Mycroft says. “The only time I've approached him in that capacity is when I needed his particular skills to find you. You were rather impressively drugged at the time, but I would imagine you'd remember.”

Sherlock stills, because he does. He does remember that. Shivering from the cold and the drugs, left against the freezing metal, and something warm had been there, then, pressed against him and letting him lean into its soft heat.

That had been John, and he hadn't known. He hadn't even thought the memory was real, just an invention of the drugs and delirium, and it had been John.

Mycroft's watching him, and his brother always sees too much. He nods his head, as if Sherlock's answered some question of his, and perhaps he has.

“Of course,” he murmurs, satisfied and _content_ , smug as a sprawling, fat, obnoxious cat. Sherlock scowls at him and paces to the other side of the room, pausing next to John's chair, demarcating territory. There's a layer to all of this, the events of tonight and the kidnapping, and it's just out of his reach just now, single events shifting in his mind. There isn't an entire picture yet, just isolated incidents. 

He can't properly think. The room's too warm, as stifling as his brother's gaze. He needs to find John. 

“So then, Sherlock, I must ask precisely what you are planning to do.”

Sherlock pauses in doing his resolute best to ignore his brother in favor of tracking through his mental map of London, a swift calculation of trajectories, likely hiding locations, all set against a consideration of John himself. 

Mycroft tells and needles, and occasionally tries to coerce, but he very rarely _asks_.

“You don't already know?”

“Not this time, I'm afraid. It's a significant enough shock that your behavior may well be atypical.”

“I wasn't aware my behavior was ever 'typical,'” he bites off.

“Sherlock.” Mycroft chides.

“You are wasting my time,” Sherlock says, “So, in summary - first, I am going to get you to leave. Second, I am going to go and track a wolf, or possibly but rather unlikely, a man, throughout London. Third, I am going to find John and bring him back to the flat. At the end of it all their may well be tea and biscuits, and _you_ are going to leave John alone or you will not like what I will do, Mycroft.” He shrugs back into his coat and grabs a collection of items while he's talking, jumping quickly about the flat, roving from shelf to shelf. He only turns back towards Mycroft in order to deliver his final threat, to find his brother smiling fondly at him, the expression cast true by the warmth in his eyes.

“Good, Sherlock. It appears I will not have to be disappointed in you today after all.” Mycroft moves toward the door, calling out as he goes, “If you cannot find him, do let me know.”

The door snicks softly shut behind him, and Sherlock stares at it for a few moments, biting back the urge to curse. Bloody Mycroft, he settles on muttering, letting the swear ripple past his lips. Bloody, blasted Mycroft.

-

The crime scene, even cleaned up, bears the easy scars of the Yard's incompetence. Footprints scattered everywhere, as though they'd done their level best to eliminate any patterns of movement, lines of departure. Destroying evidence. The professionals are the worst sort of amateurs. 

They haven't managed to destroy everything, though. Sherlock starts a wide sweep around the perimeter of the scene, spiraling outward until he catches the first of wolf-tracks, heading away from the scene.

It's a clear path at the first, led by knocked-over crates and scratches in the wood fence, a tuft of soft fur where John must have snagged himself on the top edge of a chain link fence. He pauses when he finds it, takes his gloves off and carefully collects every bit of fur, twisting the hairs together and keeping it.

He can trace his path as far as the small park, and then through it. After that, though, the stone and concrete swallows up any trace of John; a few lengths worth of mud smudges that blur away to incoherence. 

It's an empty part of town late at night, and the park itself is particularly deserted because of it. If John were going to hide, he wouldn't have done it there – too close to where he'd run from, bad associations with the site himself and the encroaching presence of the police – but he'd have considered it, lured by the dark shadows of trees and the overgrowth of weeds and brush barely kept in check by the city.

The line of tracks through the park; however, is ruler-straight. There's no hesitation in it at all. These aren't the tracks of flight but of _transit._ John's moving with a clear destination in mind, and that narrows down the field of search quite considerably.

Sherlock turns the information over in his head: he's stayed in his wolf form, and is likely to do so, so it would have to be very close association or a family member. His tracks aren't heading back to the flat, and if John has any close friends living in London Sherlock doesn't know of them, which makes him place reasonable doubt in their existence.

After two months, John had mentioned his parents were deceased, and yes, he didn't have an extended family. Both of these were facts Sherlock had already known, but confirmation's always nice. 

Options and alternatives flicker out one by one, like a long row of dying lights. Sarah, whom John still keeps in occasional touch with outside of work. Discarded – John had mentioned she was out of town.

There's Harry, he reasons, who would know of John's predicament. But Harry is not a comforting presence to John, for all that she's his family: every phone conversation ends with him tense in the set of his shoulders, and he always comes home from the infrequent actual meetings with her angry and spoiling for something to shoot, though John would never admit it.

And then, just as he's discarded that option, Sherlock's own words flicker back to him, words from the very day he'd first met John - _and you're not going to your brother for help - maybe you liked his wife._

Clara. _Who's Clara,_ except someone John still speaks to from time to time – Sherlock's heard half of those conversations, laced with easy affection - who works as a solicitor, and whom John is reassured by. Sherlock can answer the question of Clara's identity. 

Her home address is the more pressing concern. 

-

When she opens the door, Clara appears neither surprised nor pleased to see him. Resigned, perhaps, in the set of her shoulders, or anticipating a confrontation, by her tightly-pulled back hair, tied up in a bun the military would be proud of.

“John didn't think you'd come here, but I'd heard him talk about you enough that I thought you'd work it out,” she says as she lets him inside. Sherlock catalogues the details of the inside of her house automatically – redecorated recently, tastefully but brutally, probably when the divorce with Harry properly went through. Legal books, evidence of her profession, and an explanation for how she manages to afford a house in London.

“Upstairs." She points behind her, over her shoulder, but doesn't quite let him pass, though, not yet. 

“He saved your life, you know,” she says. Her eyes narrow at Sherlock's single nod.

“He saved you life,” she repeats, “And if you've just come to be a colossal prat – again – and have it out with him over who he is, then you can leave. I'll send someone for his things in the morning.”

Protective instincts and feelings have their time and place, but right now, Sherlock has no patience for them.

“And did you react so well when Harry told you?” Clara tenses as the question hits home, and Sherlock presses the advantage, moving past her.

“What I have to say is between John and myself.” He pauses at the foot of the stairs. “However, I assure you I have no intention of being a prat, colossal or otherwise.”

For no reason he can readily determine, Clara laughs at that, the sound tired but true.

The stairwell is littered with pictures; some of Clara and a blond woman with a softer version of John's jawline and chin. A fair few are of John, and in all of them he's smiling.

Once he climbs the stairs he no longer needs to look at pictures. John stands at the end of the hallway, in wolf form. He isn't crouched and cautious as he was earlier this night, instead, he's making the most of his rather impressive size, meeting Sherlock's eyes and holding his gaze with his own. His eyes are different but the same, somehow. It's imprecise, but Sherlock can only think of how they still looks like John's. 

How stupid must he have been, to flinch. It's always been John.

His fur is clean and dry. Clara must have helped. 

John makes an odd noise, a sort of huffing laugh, and cracks his jaw wide in a yawn that showcases an impressive set of teeth. He lets his tongue loll out of the side of his mouth, and wags his tail twice. That, amazingly enough, is what breaks the moment apart, lets Sherlock center himself.

“Yes, fine, my behavior earlier was reprehensible. Have you finished grandstanding?”

John huffs again, turning and leading the way into the room behind him. Sherlock follows, and John stands still in the center of the room – guest room, an impression of John's wolf form making its dented shape on the duvet. 

Sherlock enters the room and keeps walking, pausing only to shed his gloves, casting both onto the bed. He's not flinching or running away from this, from John, and when he reaches down to cradle his hand against the top of John's head, buried in the soft fur between and behind his pricked ears, John closes his eyes.

It's John, and Sherlock feels everything snap back into its proper place.

He doesn't move his hand but instead crouches low, puts himself on John's level. He's in range of John's own weapons now, but he's seen how quick John can be. If John wished him harm, he'd be dead already. 

“In my defense, you managed to surprise me quite effectively.” At that, John pushes his head into Sherlock's hand. The fur there is coarse, a wolf's coat, designed for utility. His hand drags down to the fur behind John's ears, finds the softer underfur of his ruff there. John lets him. He is still and very warm, and yes, Sherlock remembers this.

-

Later, after they go home, he asks questions, and John answers them, easily, without hesitation.

“It's a...it's hereditary. All that nonsense about being bitten and becoming a werewolf – that's all just the movies. You either are or you aren't.”

Sherlock settles himself on the edge of the sofa, perched lightly on the arm. “As your sister must also display the trait, that would fit.”

“Should I even ask?” John says as he walks into the kitchen, beginning the familiar motions of making tea. Sherlock watches his hand as he does, watches the press and shift of bone and muscle beneath skin.

“She was completely comfortable with it – far too comfortable, unless she'd lived with someone who had displayed the trait often.” He answers, the words fast, automatic.

John's staring at the tea he's preparing, measuring out sugar with a nearly chemical precision, never once looking away from the two mugs. “I could always have told her. I see Clara often enough.”

He does, more than he sees Lestrade for coffee or for alcohol or for whatever other drink is appropriate for arbitrary consumption in social settings. Sherlock spares a moment to consider that idea carefully – John had known Clara before Afghanistan, after all – and he feels something in him tighten, clench at the unlikely but not impossible conclusion. A growing relationship between the two of them doesn't fit John's character, though.

“Harry must like to spend time in her other form, and Clara doesn't own any large dogs that would have accounted for the number of throw blankets and large floor pillows.”

“They were together for years,” John replies. “It's not something you just turn off.”

Sherlock wonders, and then tries it. He focuses his thoughts and, for the next few minutes, he imagines deleting John from this room, this flat – from his life. Sees a sketch of his experiments sprawled out across the whole kitchen, through the second bedroom upstairs. Imagines going to cases alone, again, and he even possesses the baseline for comparison, even though Baker Street is not Montague Street. The variables stack up and the experiment grows increasingly complicated and John starts to creep in around the corners of his mental projection – a stack of medical journals, cupboards labeled 'Not For Science' in neat, block capitals. John's coat is hanging by the door, and one of his jumpers is strewn over the back of his chair, and – 

\- and John walks over and presses a mug of tea into his hand, just as always. The experiment falls apart.

Sherlock gives up trying to imagine an absence of John and returns his focus to the presence of John.

“Perhaps,” he settles on saying. John smiles at that, at him, and Sherlock's chest feels tight again, though entirely different from before.

“Besides,” he continues as John settles into his chair, “I can't believe you would have confided in her regarding your lycanthropy and not in me. It would have become increasingly unlikely after we'd lived together for six months, let alone a year.”

“Okay. Ground rules. Please don't call my shifting 'your lycanthropy' again, particularly not in that tone of voice, Sherlock. You make it sound like I have lupus.”

“Would it even be possible for you to have lupus?” 

“I've never tried,” John says, sipping at his tea. “But no, I wouldn't think so, not with the differences in the immune system.”

“But you were shot, John. You must have received a transfusion at some point.”

“I did. I don't have 'type werewolf' blood, Sherlock. It's not that different, but some things just don't transfer. The immune system's also pretty aggressive – look, it's not like there's studies on this, or a medical journal.

“'Effects of disease transference on werewolves?'”

“Not entirely a well-published topic, no.”

“Pity,” Sherlock replies, as John picks up a magazine from near his chair and begins to idly leaf through it. Avoidance, Sherlock's mind supplies, though he does wonder exactly from _what_.

“Well, there's a small audience for it.”

“How small?” Sherlock immediately asks. “Mycroft already alluded to the presence of other werewolves in the government.

John shrugs. “That's new to me, as well. I would have thought we'd avoid that sort of work. Doesn't do much for the anonymity aspect of it all.” 

John's still not quite meeting his eyes. It's an unusual level of avoidance, atypical behavior for him, but Sherlock imagines the subject at hand isn't entirely one he's comfortable discussing.

“Which is a rather deliberate concern of yours,” Sherlock replies, turning the particulars of the situation over in his mind. There's something off about all of this, still. “How long, then, had Harry known Clara before she told her?”

“They'd been together just over eight months.”

“She told you of her intentions first then.”

John nods and stares at Sherlock. “We fought over it. She was exposing the both of us, after all. I was friends with Clara – hell, I introduced the two of them, but it wasn't something I wanted her knowing.”

“Fear of exposure. Understandable.” At that, John shifts his gaze to his tea, as if divining secrets in it. Sherlock can't decide what the emotions flitting across John's face are; for once, this is something outside his reach.

“Sherlock, the only secrets I manage to keep from you are the ones you can't imagine existing. Your problem is that you figure things about people out so quickly, you forget that people have secrets for a reason. Just because you can deduce something about me doesn't mean you have a right to it.”

The delivery is wrong. The words sound like they should be delivered shouting, in the midst of a fight. Instead, John's voice is soft, almost resigned.

He returns to what John had first said – the only _secrets_. His mind snags on the plural.

“Secrets, John? Should I hope the others are suitably as dramatic?”

Emotions flicker across John's face, Sherlock could count them, identify each of them and classify them appropriately (his earlier annoyance fading to exasperation, resigned amusement, and - ) label them and place them inside neat and little boxes in his mind. 

He wouldn't delete them, of course. He never deletes anything of John. But what he just said wasn't right. Too light for this conversation. Sincerity might be called for then, in its stead.

“If there are other secrets, John, I'd like to hear them. You can always ask me for mine, I suppose. If I can deduce yours, it's only fair I tell you mine.”

At that, John stays silent, and Sherlock finds himself concentrating on the expression he can't quite understand, focusing entirely on the steady set of John's shoulder and how, in the low light of their flat, his eyes look like an entirely different shade of blue. 

A day is easily divided in hours, hours into minutes, minutes into seconds. Even that unit of time is remarkably imprecise. Situations change from moment to moment. Observation requires the measurement of those nearly imperceptible shifts. By those tiny, critical units, they've been here before countless times, and yet John looks different. 

Like this is someplace they'd never been before.

John, who is so often steadfast and constant, surprises Sherlock by being mercurial, his anger fading, replaced by amusement as he quirks a smile. 

“If this goes badly, mind, I'm willing to ignore it entirely.” John says, and mutters something else, about burning all his bridges at once, whispered and under his breath though Sherlock still catches it.

And then John is _there_ , standing right in front of him, somehow having navigated himself into the space between Sherlock's sprawled knees. Moved as silent as a shadow, Sherlock thinks, or as a secret, and how had he not noticed this, when he notices everything, how could he have not noticed that John Watson could cross a room without making a sound? That when he forgets to move like a soldier, he moves like what he truly is, not with grace but with a predator's purpose.

John reaches down slowly, giving Sherlock plenty of time to change his mind, to move away. Instead, Sherlock doesn't move, may as well be carved from stone, he's so very still as John slots one hand through his tangled hair, trailing it down until it fits neatly against the line of Sherlock's jaw, the pulse beating in his neck. John's hands are rough and warm.

“In the interests of full disclosure,” he murmurs, and kisses Sherlock, barely pressing his own lips against Sherlock's. He doesn't respond for a moment, overwhelmed by the new sensations – he has so much more to catalogue now, sight and taste and touch and sound and all of it's John, and thus critically important. He has to keep track of it all, and he doesn't have time to do all of that and kiss back, so John begins to back off, the beginnings of an apology forming on his face.

Sherlock stops him, with a hand reaching up to cup around the back of his neck, feeling smooth skin and strong muscle, the beat of blood and pillar of bone that makes of the body of his friend.

Data, he thinks. Repeated sets, controls and variables, an experiment he wouldn't want to stop repeating, perhaps not ever. Imprecise time constraints, or a lack of them entirely. For science, he thinks, and draws John back down.

-

Sherlock hates ambiguity, but all the same, it takes nearly a week before John shifts in his presence again.

Of course, the week is hardly wasted. Their relationship hasn't changed, he thinks, so much as shifted, but he's had time to realize just how interestingly clever John can be, when given the appropriate motivations.

What he hadn't had time to realize earlier is that John is _glorious_ like this, crouched, snarling before Sherlock, all tense muscle and sharp, sharp teeth.

He crouches before Sherlock, tense and low. He'd shifted before, tracking scents and had paced beside Sherlock, loose-limbed and easy, until the man (would-be mugger, early thirties, inexperienced and trying to support a nasty heroin addiction) had threatened them, and it was as if a switch had been thrown, his entire posture changing, from relaxed to attack – to intent to kill – in an instant.

It's nothing like a dog. It's not even very much like a wolf, Sherlock knows. It's John, and he's something else entirely.

He rushes the man in a clean sweep, an explosion of muscle and fur. The mugger doesn't have a chance, John knocking him over and ripping at the fabric over the man's right arm, immobilizing him before he had a chance to do anything with that cheap knife he's holding. 

“Call him off, man! Please, god, call him off!” the man screams, over and over, his words panicked in pitch.

Sherlock strides over and kicks the dropped knife away from him. “I think you should let him up. He's hardly a threat, and I'm certain he's learned his lesson.”

John eases off of him and the man's up like a shot, stumbling away into the night. He noses at the knife once, sniffing at it and shaking his head as if he's found his smell annoying, and scrubbing one forepaw over his face when that doesn't seem to work. 

Sherlock can easily transpose the motion to John's face when he's found the remnants of some particularly fascinating experiments of Sherlock's in the sink or the cupboards. 

He can't quite help it, and in a narrow back alley of London, he gives in and starts to laugh.

-

“I'd like to see it,” Sherlock says, and John fights the instinctual protest. It's stupid and infantile, because Sherlock already knows, but he's suddenly seven again, listening to his father tell him how he must be careful, and never tell.

“Haven't you seen it already? I did take out several people right in front of you, you know. It's not as though it's something new.”

“They weren't nice people, though.”

He remembers that line. “No, I don't suppose they were.”

“John,” Sherlock chides. “You're acting a bit like I'm about to dissect you. I'm not. I just want to see it.”

And that's taking him in all sorts of ways, almost alarming ways, and John resigns himself to giving up all of his secrets.

“This is going to come out wrong,” John warns. The words aren't right, because there aren't words that would fit, at all, for what he feels right now, for this mad man, for what he wants to do to Sherlock and have Sherlock do to him in return. He wants to know what Sherlock tastes like, what Sherlock's secrets feel like when he digs in deeply enough to find them and sinks his teeth in. He wants to belong to Sherlock, he knows, wants Sherlock to reach inside and know him, not just deduce him, but _know_ him, well and truly. 

He wants everything and anything and it's all too much and terrifying, intense and bright, the knowledge that if Sherlock ripped him open and skinned him and wore his fur it'd be death and horrible and wonderful, all at the same time. That he might not even mind, if Sherlock was the one doing it, if he became a part of Sherlock, something he couldn't throw away.

But there aren't words for any of that, not the ones that matter, so John settles for what he can manage to say, despite the limitations of language.

“I wouldn't mind so much, if you dissected me, as long as it was properly me you were dissecting.”

He's surprised Sherlock, John can see. Surprise in the slight widening of Sherlock's eyes, the hitch in his breath that would be imperceptible if the shift wasn't so close to the surface, nearly forcing its way through the cracks of him that are human.

Surprise isn't the only thing he's stirred in Sherlock, he realizes as he lets the shift ripple through him, feels bones shrink and length, muscle grow and fur cover his form like a spreading blanket. 

He's shifted in front of Sherlock, but this is different. This time, Sherlock can see everything, and he twists in a circle once, feeling the floor solid beneath his four legs. Everything's much sharper, and the room is filled with the sounds of Sherlock breathing. It's the only thing he can hear beyond the pounding of his own heart.

Sherlock's scent floods over him, old paper and something else, something sharper and new. They've been edging towards this for a week, John thinks, since he kissed Sherlock and the other man kissed him back. Edging towards it with small steps of light touches and hesitant kisses and one rather impressive instance two nights ago where John had snapped a bit and spent a good half hour kissing bruises on the long lines of Sherlock's collarbones. 

Neither of them entirely sure where to draw the line, though, and he wonders if, this time, Sherlock's the one who's snapped, even if only a little.

Sherlock swallows hard, once, and John watches the muscles shift as his throat moves, watches his chest rise as he pulls in a deep breath.

“Shift back, John.”

It isn't a command, but John follows that whisper as if it were an order, and shifts. His jeans hanging low and loose on his hips, and Sherlock is looking at him, staring as if John has only now done something wonderful. As if he's more amazing in this form, right now, then he could ever have been before.

John has time to take a breath before Sherlock's on him, slamming him into the wall behind him, crowding him into it with sharp kisses that turn into a line of bites down the line of John's jaw, trailing down his throat. He groans and throws his head back, dazed as it hits the wall behind him and at that Sherlock takes a moment to cradle the back of his head with his hand, winding his long fingers through his short hair. 

Then Sherlock's pressed against him, as if he were the predator, and maybe he is, maybe they both are.

John thought, once, that he'd take Sherlock any way he could get him. He's imagined more, of course. He's imagined kissing Sherlock, imagined trapping him against walls or closed doors, stopping that restless, constant energy with the solid press of his own body, or pulling Sherlock onto the sofa and letting his weight bear them both down. He's imagined pulling Sherlock's fine clothes off of him and fucking him, holding him down, and imagined Sherlock fucking him, spreading him open with his long, elegant fingers and then pushing in, invading him just like he invades nearly every part of John's life.

John's imagined all that, but he's never imagined that it could be the opposite, that Sherlock would want John in any and every way he could have him.

Now, though, Sherlock's here, something like desperation in his eyes and his hand sliding down John's bare chest to rest over his swiftly-beating heart. 

After that, John doesn't need to imagine anything else.

-

Sherlock begins to methodically pick up the smuggling network, with such deliberate determination that John thinks it may have much more to do with the person behind all of this than anything.

For three weeks, he takes apart smugglers and drug traffickers, reducing carefully hidden and executed trade routes with nothing more than a few exacting deductions. And then, he and John take apart each other.

Sherlock is a knife honed to a razor's edge, or a scalpel, perhaps, and he is absolutely _brilliant_. 

All of it is, really, so perhaps it's not that surprising that it all goes to hell.

-

John is late. He'd said he'd meet him back at the flat before shifting, on the trail of a scent he'd recognized, something that might well link to the last vestiges of this entire smuggling operation. 

And now he's late. Sherlock turns the information over his mind, but every conclusion leads to increasing worry. John is late, and John is never late. 

Nor is he answering his phone, though he wouldn't be able to if he's still shifted (and someday, Sherlock is going to have to work out the particulars of just how that works, that John can still have his clothes and whatever's in his pockets when he shifts, but anything else is lost and – enough. He's getting distracted.)

Late – over an hour late, in fact, and between 8:35 and 9:42, Sherlock sends John seven texts. 

_John._

_Answer your phone._

_You were supposed to meet me._

_John, I know you have your phone._

_JOHN._

_I will set Lestrade and the Met on you._

_John, please answer._

At 9:47, as he is preparing to send another text, this time to Mycroft, Sherlock receives a single comment on his website.

_miss me? i decided to try and teach an old dog some new tricks. you don't mind if i borrow yours, do you?_

-

When he comes to, John almost wishes he hadn't. He's still shifted, in wolf form, and he's shaky as a pup on his four legs.

“Now, now, puppy.” At that voice, god, _that voice_ , John freezes, and Moriarty steps out of the shadows behind some large shipping crates – John recognizes the warehouse now, the one from the first 'reconnaissance' mission with Sherlock that almost got them both shot at.

The man grins at him, maniacal, death's head grin, as it the entire world's just a joke to him, everything just a game. He can't remember how he got here, just recalls tracking through the streets, following a scent he recognized before the world exploded in a swirl of red and black pain.

“You've properly surprised me, puppy. And you can't imagine how rarely that happens. Really, the last time anyone managed it, I just had to up the stakes in return, and now he's...well. We got to have such fun, him and I. Just like a party.”

Moriarty loves the sound of his own voice, and he drapes his words over himself, wears his speech like a coat. He strides closer, and John focuses on him, because otherwise he'd have to think about the unwelcome weight choking his neck, heavier than any chain he's ever worn in disguise. An unwelcome weight put by unwelcome hands, and Moriarty's in range and he can't help it, the growl rumbling out of his throat as he crouches, muscles tense as a spring.

Of course, Moriarty just keeps fucking grinning. John can smell gun-oil and leather on the air; doesn't need to look to know that his side is dotted with the flickering red lights of snipers. He forces himself into stillness.

“Well done, you. Looks like you might be properly _trainable_ after all.” He draws out the word, breathes the syllables like smoke and lets them fall to the ground as so much fine ash. 

“Of course, Sherlock's never had much trouble, has he? In training you.”

He doesn't let himself move, but can't stop himself from growling, a long and low sound building in his throat. He catches the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye before Moriarty's hand catches the side of his head in a ringing slap, catching at the sensitive skin of his ear.

“None of that, now, puppy. Here's how this works.” Moriarty kneels before John, twisting one heavy hand into his fur. 

“You behave yourself like a good dog. You wear your collar and mind your manners and maybe, if you're good, I'll keep you.”

His words feel heavier than the collar forced around his neck, heavier than the hand twisting a firm hold in his fur. 

“If you misbehave,” he continues, his hand twisting at his fur until the hold becomes painful, “if you're a bad dog – well, I won't kill Sherlock when he eventually shows up, because he's far too interesting. But I _will_ have my boy Seb shoot out one of his knees.”

Oh god.

“And there are so many _boring_ people around you, after all. Your landlady. That Detective Inspector who lets Sherlock help on his little cases. You know, the one you meet for lunch from time to time. I'd even make that one look like an accident.”

Of course Moriarty knows about that, knows that in the months since meeting Lestrade the man's become his friend. God, he probably has pictures, John realizes. 

“Your sister. I wouldn't make _that_ look like an accident. Maybe I'll force a collar around her neck and choke her with it. That'd be fun. I might even do that myself.”

John flicks his ears back to lie flat against the curve of his skull. The world is spinning sickly all around him, the cold concrete of the warehouse floor the only solid thing in the room.

“Now,” Moriarty continues, rising to his feet and grimacing at the dirt and dust on the knees of his suit trousers. “Sit, puppy.”

And John, hating him more than he's ever hated anything or anyone, does.

“Good puppy,” Moriarty croons at him, and it takes every degree of control John had not to snap off the fingers that dig into the fur of his ruff. 

“You are the most interesting present, puppy. It was so boring, away from England, with neither Sherlock nor big brother to play with. I got so bored, in fact, I decided to take a closer look at just why Sherlock would bother with someone as utterly boring, as hopelessly pedestrian as you.”

Moriarity sounds delighted with himself, so very pleased. “And then I found out just how _interesting_ you could be, puppy. And we are going to have such fun together.”

He leaps up, his fingers yanking on John's fur before he lets him go. He's talking, still, always.

“Good job, puppy, taking care of those three idiots. I do my best to discourage initiative, but some people don't quite take to the lesson. You dispatched them so neatly, too – that CCTV footage was worth sneaking around under big brother's watch for.”

He can't help but be drawn to the man, Moriarty commanding his full attention. Despite that, the proximity to the madman, something else begins to edge through his senses, and at the first hint of it, the familiar scent of old paper and leather, John grows infinitely more afraid.

“I wonder what else you can manage to do. Still, we have all the time in the world, don't we?” Moriarty raises his voice and speaks again. “Oh, do stop skulking in corners, Sherlock. It doesn't suit you.”

The scent comes into sharp definition, and Sherlock steps into the light. 

“You should have stayed out of the country, Moriarty. It would have kept you alive for a bit longer.”

“But you were being so _boring._ And big brother was hardly even a challenge either. Lucky for me your puppy turned out to be so unexpectedly entertaining.”

Sherlock's got John's gun in his hand, and he carries it with a calm and even competency. He's carried it before after all, in a situation much like this one. Everything that is happening, John thinks, has already happened before.

Except the explosives. And the pool. Maybe no one will get shot at this time, but that seems unlikely, particularly with Sherlock leveling the gun at Moriarty.

“Careful, Sherlock. We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.” 

“Wouldn't we.”

Moriarty gestures to the flickering red lights of the sniper sights. “This didn't work out so well for you last time. My snipers -”

Sherlock tightens his grip on the gun; his fingers going white. “They aren't _yours_ anymore, Moriarty.”

One by one, all the sniper sights slide over to rest on Moriarty, painting him with flickering red lights. The man looks down at himself and his mouth narrows in anger, the mirth draining out of him.

“Calling in big brother, Sherlock? You may have learned your lesson, but that's not playing _fair_.”

Several things happen at once, then: John catches the smell of old metal, what he associates with Mycroft, and one of the sniper lights slides away from Moriarty, to hover on Sherlock. Sherlock catches sight of it, of course, and John doesn't hesitate, springing at the man, crashing into him with his full weight and pushing him down to the ground just as Sherlock and the one sniper Mycroft's men must have missed fire, the shots so close together they all sound as one.

-

The bullet grazes him in the leg, and John can't help but whimper, a long low whine. Nimble fingers are tangled in his fur, tugging at the catch of the collar Moriarty forced on him, ripping it off. Sherlock's frantic.

“John, Mycroft's men are cleaning up, but Lestrade and the other are coming too. They saw the website, and I can't explain this away – can you still shift safely?”

They can't know. He told Sherlock, and Mycroft already knew and now _Moriarty_ knows, oh god, he'll have to warn Harriet, fuck, but John doesn't want the others to know. He forces the shift and it hurts, not like all those months ago in Afghanistan, there's no bullet to shift around, but it still hurts. He's gasping for breath and anchors himself with the feel of Sherlock's hands on him; his shoulder, his chest, hovering awkwardly over the wound in his leg.

“Pressure on it.”

“John-”

“Put pressure on it,” he repeats, stifling a gasp when Sherlock does. Fuck, but that hurts.

Sherlock's looking increasingly worried, and John does his best to reassure him, despite the blood slicking his gloves. “It's fine. Heavy bleed but he missed the femoral entirely.”

Sherlock, of course, simply presses down harder, as if by that action alone he could will John's bleeding to stop. 

“I should have killed him.”

He tilts his gaze to where Moriarty was standing and finds a splash of blood and an empty floor. “I was hoping you had.” 

“The one sniper Mycroft's men missed – he'd started shooting at the men he could reach, laying down enough cover for Moriarty to get out. The sniper-”

“Seb. He called him Seb. I'm betting that's him.”

Sherlock shrugs out of his coat, pressing the wool to the gash on John's leg. It's still bleeding, but he's not that worried. Stitches and a transfusion, but he'll live.

“Mycroft's men are in pursuit. It's likely too much too hope for that they'll catch him. The sniper's a military man. Or ex-military, more likely.”

The sounds of many rushing feet scrape against his hearing. “Great. Tell me why later.”

-

They finally have the conversation they've been avoiding two days after John gets back from the hospital. He's pressed himself up against Sherlock, drawing reassurance from the solidity of the man.

“He threatened them. Mrs. Hudson, my sister, Lestrade.” John lets his grip on Sherlock's shoulder's tighten, draws him nearer until he's pressed against him, chest to chest and hip to hip. “You. Said he'd get his man with the sniper rifle to shoot out one of your knees if you misbehaved.”

“John-” Sherlock's breath disturbs his hair, batters against his temple, but John doesn't let him continue.

“I saw that happen to someone – not the exact circumstances, that'd be a trick to recreate, wouldn't it, with the warehouse and the – but I saw most of someone's knee taken off by shrapnel from an IED. It was – you don't get better from that, Sherlock, not ever, not entirely. You'd be lucky to get by with a cane, after rounds of surgery.” He's very close to rambling, he knows, and finds the calm that centered him through his tours of Afghanistan, in the desert sand and sky, and breathes.

It takes time, but eventually he falls asleep, and wakes up to the sight of Sherlock turning the long length of chain from his dresser drawer over and over in his hands.

“You're not his, John. You can't tell me something like that, that you're mine, that I could have you – you told me that, and you're not stupid. Surely you realized what that meant, to say something like that to something like me.”

John does know. Sherlock's right, after all, because Sherlock's always, always right, even when he's not. So he tilts his head back and bares his throat, and shivers at the cool and welcome weight as Sherlock fastens the long length of chain about his neck.

His therapist, John thinks, from when he first came back from Afghanistan, wouldn't approve of this. It's borderline self-destructive, maybe, and certainly not a healthy way of processing post-traumatic stress from life-threatening events. At the least, it's far from normal.

John is a werewolf and his flatmate is a genius who deduced nearly everything about him within three seconds of their meeting. Normal's overrated. 

Sherlock settles into the bed beside him, his touch hesitant, as if he hasn't quite determined John's reaction to this, not yet. Tilting his head, feeling the heft of the chain, the grounding weight of it, he gives Sherlock the slightest of nods and watches the man relax in the near-darkness of the bedroom.

Then, of course, he attacks, trapping Sherlock in a cage of his legs and arms, catching his wrists and pinning them. He drops his head and lets the chain hang low, lets it drag along the long length of Sherlock's bare chest and stomach.

Sherlock sucks in a breath that sounds like John's name and John decides that he couldn't care less about normal. 

-

Three weeks later, he's just starting to ditch his non-psychosomatic limp, and John returns home from a shift at the surgery to find Sherlock engrossed in _Wolfman_ , the 1940s one even, all black and white and horrible special effects.

“I'm going to go back downstairs, and then come back,” he says, hanging his coat up by the door. “And when I come back, you are going to be watching something less ridiculous.”

He closes the door on Sherlock's indignant cry of “It's for research, John! Research!” in favor of doing exactly as he threatened, and heading down the stairs, returning Mrs. Hudson's cheerful greeting as he waits the requisite ten seconds or so before heading back up to the flat, taking the stairs two at a time.

To find Sherlock, of course, still watching that bloody movie. Watching the movie and, by all appearances, _taking notes,_ and fine, two can play at this nonsense game. 

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him, tossing a glance that is all challenge and John doesn't even bother speaking, just locks the door behind him, shrugs his jumper off for the ease of it and shifts, springing up onto the couch until he's fairly sprawled on it. He's never mastered the ease cats have for taking up more space that would seem physically possible, but he manages well enough, crowding Sherlock until the man's forced to push back against him.

“You are blocking my view,” Sherlock informs him. “This movie informs much of modern thought concerning werewolves, John. It's critical for understanding the general tenor of the public consciousness.” 

John's only response to that is to shove his head against Sherlock's chest.

“You are well aware, I hope, that you're getting hair all over my shirt.”

A small victory, but it's his. He settles down, resting his head on Sherlock's knee. It really is a terrible movie, but Sherlock's long fingers wind endlessly through the fur of his ruff and lingering lightly over the long chain nestled there, and that's all right then. He can stand the movie, if he gets to watch it like this.


End file.
